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THE SUBSTANCE OF HAPPINESS 



THE SUBSTANCE OF 
HAPPINESS 



BY 

DANIEL RUSSELL, D.D. 

Minister in the Irvington Presbyterian Church 
Irvington-on-Hudson 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 



COPYRIGHT, 1914 
BY LUTHER H. CARY 



THE PILGRIM PRESS 
BOSTON 

DEC 18 1914 

©CI.A391017 



THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED IN 
REVERENT AFFECTION TO THE 
MEMORY OF MY FATHER WHO 
BEING DEAD YET SPEAKETH. 



CONTENTS 



I Happiness — The Quest and the 

Tangles 3 

II Happiness — Revelation and the 

Lower Self ....... 19 

III Happiness — Revelation and the 

Higher Self 39 

IV Happiness — The Joy of Our Lord . 57 
V Happiness — Enter Thou! ... 73 

VI Happiness — The Fuller Entrance . 93 

VII Happiness — The Entrance Perfected 111 

VIII The Mistakes of Felix .... 127 

IX The Gift of Power and Love . . 141 

X The Immortality of Goodness . . 157 

XI Gray Hairs 173 

XII As an Eagle — So the Lord . . . 187 

XIII The Goodness of the Immortal . . 201 

XIV The Master Builder 223 

XV My Lord and My God .... 239 

XVI The Meaning of Pain 259 

XVII Christus Consolator 279 



I 

(a) THE QUEST AND THE TANGLES 



[1] 



" I withheld not my heart from any joy." 

— Ecclesiastes 2: 10. 



[2] 



I 



THE QUEST AND THE TANGLES 

LIFE? What is it all but one great quest for 
joy? " Every drop of blood in the bird 
beats toward flight and song." Every drop of sap 
scrambles joyously up and out toward leaf and 
fruit and flower. Our activities, and those of our 
friends are motived by this thirst for happiness. 

If we turn from the fine careless rapture of bird 
and bloom; from the consideration of our own 
life aims and those of the narrow circle of our 
friends, to seek a wider field of induction, we may 
consider the philosopher. What is it he seeks, — 
has sought through the slow centuries — as he 
toils alone, unsl umbering, by the midnight lamp? 
It may be some finer happiness for himself in the 
attainment of ultimate and systematized thought ; 
or his labor may be just a profound attempt to 
base this happiness of mankind upon reality. 
Epicurus says " the gist of life, the end of ends " 
is the pursuit of pleasure, and his modern disciple 
views life as a u great task of happiness." The 
Stoics teach self-control, and declare that men are 
not disturbed by things, but by the view which 
they take of things; that as the triumphs of 
dictators and consuls could be celebrated fitly 

[3] 



The Substance of Happiness 



only in Rome, so the true triumph of Fate may- 
take place only in the soul. Plato counsels the 
subordination of the lower to the higher nature. 
Aristotle declares that pleasures admitted to be 
base are no pleasures, except to those whose 
natures are corrupt. What the good man thinks 
is pleasure will be pleasure. " Those pleasures 
which perfect the activity of the perfect and 
truly happy man may be called in the truest sense 
the pleasures of a man." 

If we turn to the historian we discover that the 
origins of his tale lie in those surges of mankind 
toward a real or longed-for happiness known as 
the great migrations. Because food is scarce, 
the drought prolonged, the climate rigorous, the 
herds or the tribe itself diminishing, or because 
some chieftain finds war essential to his peace of 
mind, the " folk- wandering " stirs from its faint 
beginnings to epochal proportions, as when the 
Teutons and Slavs of north-eastern Europe, 
wearying of cold and mist and narrow pasturage, 
pushed up against the gates of empire to the south, 
and finding them unguarded, pressed on to the 
fat and tempting lands about the Mediterranean. 
Or, as when Tamburlane, mad with lust of domin- 
ion, striving toward his 

" ripest fruit of all, 
That perfect bliss and sole felicity, 
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown," 

subjugates nations, and builds pyramids with 
skulls of slaughtered foes. Viewing the world of 
nature and of men, of thought and of action, we 

[4] 



The Quest and the Tangles 

shall hardly escape the conclusion that all life 
is a quest for happiness, history the story of the 
search, philosophy and science the efforts to 
detect its source and direct its course. 

Along the pathway of this universal pilgrimage, 
there are tangled mazes to be crossed in which 
many lose their way. The first of these is a wide 
disagreement concerning the meaning of the 
word happiness, and the nature of the thing it- 
self. If we wish information about shoes, or 
mastodons, it is not difficult to come by. The 
advertising pages of the weekly magazines give 
details of the one, the encyclopaedias describe 
the other. But even the new Britannica has no 
monograph on happiness, while the advertise- 
ments disclose so many ways of winning it that 
confidence is shaken. Probably we are too busy 
getting happiness to come to any general agree- 
ment as to what it is. We don't know where we 
are going, but we are on the way. Perhaps the 
subject is too vast, running as it does, in differ- 
ent minds, the whole gamut from mere easing of 
pain to positive rapture, and linking with the 
whole of life. Now it is conceived as the proper 
functioning of a sense organ, now as consisting 
in the presence and favor of God in a future life, 
now as the activity of the highest part of the 
soul, now as the ecstasy of the believer's mystical 
union with God. One writer is sure it can never 
be satisfactorily defined, while another, a noted 
German scholar, declares that we are all making 
difficult what in reality is very simple. Happiness, 
he says, consists of two positive factors. First, 

[5] 



The Substance of Happiness 

happiness is achieved through a successful exer- 
cise of energy — energy being in proportion to 
the carbonic acid secreted by the organism. 
Second, happiness is proportioned to the degree 
in which that which happens, is in harmony with 
desire. Given these positive factors, the follow- 
ing formula becomes possible: 

Let E = amount of energy voluntarily exercised. 
Let W = amount of energy involuntarily exercised. 
Let H = happiness. 

Then H = (E plus W) (E minus W). Or H = 
E 2 minus W 2 — and there you are! Though we 
smile, the idea will repay serious study. The 
" successful exercise of energy is a momentous 
factor in the happiness of each of us. The theory, 
however, is inadequate. There are many who 
expend energy successfully, that is to say in suc- 
cessful accomplishment of the immediate purpose 
of the expenditure, who are still unhappy. While 
there are others — the aged and the invalids for 
example — who expend little energy because 
they have little to expend, who are wondrously 
happy. Nor will some children, nor some men, 
nor the more child-like, backward races — your 
tropical islander, and your negro — fit into this 
scheme altogether, for their happiness often 
depends upon a successful conservation, rather 
than a successful expenditure of strength. 

Another discussion arises when we ask whether 
happiness is an inward or an outward thing. Does 
it lie in environment or in disposition; in circum- 
stances or in character? The Stoics, ancient 

[6] 



The Quest and the Tangles 

and modern, hold it to be an affair of character 
wholly, and that it is possible to attain and main- 
tain such an attitude toward events that the most 
distressing shall move us not at all. Marcus 
Aurelius says: " Let the part of thy soul which 
leads and governs be undisturbed by the move- 
ments in the flesh, whether of pleasure or pain; 
and let it not unite itself with them, but let it 
circumscribe itself, and limit those effects to their 
parts." Seneca's pilot says, " Oh Neptune, you 
may save me if you will; you may sink me if 
you will; but whatever happens, I shall keep my 
rudder true." Epictetus says: "When you see 
a person weeping in sorrow, either when a child 
goes abroad, or when he is dead, or when the man 
has lost his property, take care that the appear- 
ance does not hurry you away with it as if he were 
suffering in external things. But straightway 
make a distinction in your mind, and be in readi- 
ness to say, it is not that which has happened that 
afflicts this man, for it does not afflict another, 
but it is the opinion about this thing which afflicts 
the man. So far as words, then, do not be un- 
willing to show him sympathy, and even if it 
happens so, to lament with him. But take care 
that you do not lament internally also." Maeter- 
linck, for the moderns, phrases the thought with 
a poet's art: "The event itself is pure water that 
flows from the pitcher of fate, and seldom has 
it either savour or perfume or color. But even 
as the soul may be wherein it seeks shelter, so 
will the event become joyous or sad, become 
tender or hateful, become deadly or quick with 

[7] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

life . . . And whether you climb up the 
mountain or go down the hill to the valley, 
whether you journey to the end of the world or 
merely walk round your house, none but yourself 
shall you meet on the highway of fate. . . . 
A sorrow your soul has changed into sweetness, 
to indulgence or patient smiles, is a sorrow that 
shall never return without spiritual ornament; 
and a fault or defect you have looked in the face 
can harm you no more." 

On the other hand stand those who lay stress 
upon environment. If environment be evil, it 
must be transformed rather than transcended. 
It is this view of life which gives to the century 
just ended its peculiar distinction, — a noble 
desire and a supreme effort for a more equable 
distribution of the material comforts of life. This 
effort projects itself clearly upon the present 
century. In the church, the school and the cau- 
cus, social issues are uniquely paramount. The 
desire for social amelioration has filled all Christen- 
dom with societies, fraternities, and institutions, 
for the nurture, care and relief of mankind. It 
has moved government toward paternalism, capi- 
tal toward philanthropy and individuals by 
hundreds to self-denying service. Modern social- 
ism with its frank externalism, all but dumb as 
far as the problem of character is concerned, 
ignoring the impossibility of bringing " golden 
conduct " from " leaden instincts," forgetting 
that 

" It takes a soul 
To move a body: it takes a high-souled man 
To move the masses, even to a cleaner sty," 

[8] 



The Quest and the Tangles 

presents this theory in its most radical and 
picturesque phase. 

The third tangle and the most difficult of all 
is disclosed as we face the question " Is the at- 
tainment of happiness the legitimate object of 
existence. " A document no less venerable than 
the constitution of the United States declares 
that all men are endowed with certain inalienable 
rights, among which is the pursuit of happiness. 
But does the right to pursue, validate the pursuit 
as a highly worthy one for mankind? In answer- 
ing this question humanity divides, sundering 
into two clearly distinguished groups. The first 
believes the attainment of happiness to be the 
highest possible achievement. As spokesmen 
they bring forward now the messenger in Sopho- 
cles' Antigone — " When a man hath forfeited 
his pleasures I count him not as living; I hold 
him but a breathing corpse " — and now the 
Persian poet, — 

" A book of verses underneath the bough, 
A jug of wine, a load of breaf — and Thou 
Beside me singing in the wilderness — 
Oh, wilderness were Paradise enow." 

In the other group are the idealists of each 
generation. Their spokesmen declare that the 
mere attainment of happiness should never be 
a first consideration. Truth is to be attained, 
though every joy be blasted; duty, stern daughter 
of the voice of God, must be heard and heeded 
though every siren pleasure sing in vain ; chastity, 
sobriety, integrity, are to be kept by the drawn 
swords of self-denial, while justice must be done 

[9] 



The Substance of Happiness 

though the heavens, starred with all delights, 
may fall. " It were better/' says Newman, " for 
sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth 
to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die 
of starvation in extremest agony, than that one 
soul, I will not say should be lost, but should 
commit one single venial sin, should tell one wil- 
ful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal 
one poor farthing without excuse." And love 
must be unfailing and without dissimulation. 

To all of which the first group make quick 
rejoinder. " That which you advocate so unc- 
tuously is just your way of seeking happiness." 

It cannot be denied that this view of the case 
is defended with consummate ability. Those who 
defend it reminding us that Newman, by his 
own confession, " loved the garish day " in youth, 
and pursued its pleasures; that he loved other 
and very different pleasures in manhood, but 
they were still his pleasures, and he pursued them 
as his life's supreme endeavor. They almost 
invariably remind us of the Puritans and the 
gloom which they enjoyed. Yet " men who 
suffered everything and came hither not to better 
their fortunes, but to plant their idea in virgin 
soil " are not to be wholly despised, and the one 
colony of all time who " went forth not to seek 
gold but God " may teach us. Perhaps after all 
their ideas were more or less sound and their 
minds keen to discriminate the real from the 
false. Perhaps the pleasures from which we flee 
to bromo-seltzers are not pleasures after all. And 
if it is true that in their day children wishing to 

[10] 



The Quest and the Tangles 



unite with the church were asked whether they 
were willing to be damned for the glory of God, 
it may have been as well to be willing to be thus 
damned, as to be willing to be damned " just 
for fun " as is now the way of so many of our 
youth. 

La Rochefoucald says, " All our virtues end 
in self-love as the rivers in the sea." Herbert 
Spencer also defends the rejoinder, and this man, 
who made all knowledge his province, from the 
unfolding of the planetary systems to the bloom- 
ing of wayside roses, argues at length and con- 
vincingly, that happiness must be the goal of 
life, else the race could not continue to exist; 
that self-sacrifice is only a subtle and deceptive 
self-serving. And when he speaks of " egoistic 
gratification in performing altruistic action " we 
are almost ready to accept such felicitous diction 
as conclusive argument. Then the words of 
Professor Bain come to mind: " So far as I am 
able to judge of our disinterested impulses, they 
are wholly distinct from the attainment of pleas- 
ure or pain. They lead us, as I believe, to sacri- 
fice pleasures, and incur pains without any 
compensation; they positively detract from our 
happiness." Or those keen words of Mr. Lecky 
recur: "The consciousness of mankind has 
ever recognized self-sacrifice as the supreme 
exchange of a lesser happiness for a greater." 
To say then, that unselfishness is only a higher 
selfishness; that our renunciations are our acqui- 
sitions; to deny the reality of the vicarious, 
seems to convict the race of a kind of vast and 

[in 



The Substance of Happiness 

incredible stupidity. The more we consider the 
matter, the longer we listen to the arguments, 
the more we are perplexed. 

Perhaps it would be better to withhold decision 
and seek some neutral ground where the con- 
flicting claims may be reconciled. The colics 
and discomforts of a melon lie in the ends. The 
best fruit is at the center. So in debate the 
extremes of difference are generally of far less 
value than those points where agreement may 
possibly be approached. Perhaps the whole 
truth here lies with neither party, but is the 
partial property of each. Let us see. 

Every individual presents a duality of char- 
acter. Each of us is, at the least, two selves. 
There is the first self, the lower self if you will, 
which transacts business. It weighs, appraises, 
considers all things with a view to its own advan- 
tage. It is the self of acquisition. It is the self 
which demands the necessities, rather expects 
the comforts, and fondly hopes for the luxuries 
of life. It is the self of the five senses, bound 
every way by physical law. It is the self which 
is continually missing the mark, defeating its 
own ends and plunging into the very distresses 
it would fain avoid. Yet it is an indispensable 
self, without which the life of the individual and 
of society is alike impossible. And there is the 
second self, the higher self, if you will. It seeks 
the significance of business. It has to do with 
beauty, truth, honor, sympathy, faith, and love. 
It is independent of physical law so that the lover 
may declare in truth 

[12J 



The Quest and the Tangles 

" Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage. . . . 
If I have freedom in my love 
And in my soul am free, 
Angels alone, that soar above, 
Enjoy such liberty." 

It transcends the earthly love which is itself 
transcendent, and mingling with Deity breathes 
in exultant bliss " I and my Father are one." 

These two selves while distinct, are in no sense 
mutually exclusive. They overlap, and shade 
into each other, and the terms " higher " and 
" lower " are used more to distinguish than to 
describe. While the higher self is good, the lower 
self is not necessarily evil. We may enjoy an 
oratorio at ten o'clock, and a Welsh rabbit at 
eleven without shame; a good poem to-day, and 
a good horse tomorrow, without self-reproach. 
Mrs. Browning sings: 

" Earth's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God; 
But only he who sees takes off his shoes: 
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. " 

But if Mrs. Browning had ever been lost in the 
woods she would have found it entirely possible 
to see God in the bush, while she ate His berries 
with better relish at the same time. 

Whether the dualism we have found is justi- 
fied by psychology or theology is a question for 
the specialists to decide. That it is of practical 
value in reconciling the age-long debate referred 
to above cannot be denied. Is the attainment of 
happiness the highest object of endeavor? No; 

[13] 



The Substance of Happiness 

if by happiness we mean the happiness of the 
lower self. But is not the attainment of the happi- 
ness of the lower self legitimate? Yes, up to the 
point where it conflicts with the happiness of the 
highest self. Once more, is happiness the highest 
object of endeavor? Yes; if by happiness we 
mean the happiness of the highest self. This 
attainment — the attainment of the highest happi- 
ness of the highest self — is the highest, holiest 
ambition we may hold before us and is worthy to 
constitute the supreme effort of our lives. 

To study the Christian religion in its relation 
to these problems of the quest for happiness is 
to be led to an admiration for it which must deepen 
to devotion. It refuses to enter into controversy. 
It rises above all narrow partisanship. It speaks 
with calm and lofty authority its own perfect 
and convincing truth. Answering the question 
of the meaning of happiness, it shows One girded 
with a towel, washing the feet of men too proud 
to perform the service for each other, who says 
" If ye know these things " — the things of humil- 
ity and service and love — " happy are ye if ye 
do them." To the question whether happiness 
is a thing of character or of circumstance it 
answers unhesitatingly "both"; giving on the 
one hand those social principles by which alone 
a more perfect environment is possible; while 
it still proclaims to every mere externalist, " Ye 
must be born again." Answering the question 
whether happiness is the highest end of life, the 
Founder draws His clear distinctions between the 
higher and the lower self, and holds them always 

[14] 



The Quest and the Tangles 



in a relation to each oth^r which is ideally perfect. 
For He refused no ministration to Himself unless 
it stayed His mission; and He accepted no com- 
fort which delayed His Cross. He ate and drank 
until His enemies declared Him a glutton and a 
wine-bibber; He fed the hungry multitudes, and 
turned water into wine that the joys of a wedding 
feast might be unconfined; yet He told men it 
was more blessed to give than to receive; that 
none were to be over-anxious concerning food 
and raiment for the morrow; that if any man 
would save his life, he must lose it. And He made 
it clear, that while He shared the common joys 
of men with eagerness, His highest joy was to do 
the will of His Father and to finish His work, 
though it led at last to a Cross of shame, where 
scourged and mocked, and set at naught by the 
blinded masters of the world, He must hang 
between two common criminals, " broken and 
bleeding like a slaughtered beast." 



[15] 



II 

(b) REVELATION AND THE LOWER SELF 



[17] 



" There is nothing better for a man, than that he 
should eat and drink, and that he delight his senses in 
his labor. This also I saw that it was from the hand 
of God." — Ecclesiastes 2: 24 (Marginal Reading). 



[18] 



II 



REVELATION AND THE LOWER SELF 

IN the last sermon, discussing the question of 
happiness as a legitimate aim of life, we noted 
a dualism in character — a lower self of self- 
interest and of physical law, and a higher self 
of self-sacrifice and spiritual law. We reached 
the opinion that the quest for happiness of the 
lower self was a worthy one up to the point where 
it interfered with the happiness of the higher self. 
Our question now is, what has the Bible revealed 
for the enhancement of the happiness of the lower 
self. 

First, it has told of those things in character and 
conduct which preclude the possibility of happi- 
ness. It has written the basal laws of morality 
and warned us against their infraction, making it 
clear to us, that as violation of the laws of water, 
air and fire bring disaster, so violation of moral 
law has its certain penalty of misery. Observ- 
ance of the mere negatives of the Decalogue would 
increase human happiness immeasurably, but 
when we find their content spiritualized and made 
positive in the teaching of Jesus, we see how 
faithful obedience to it would not only banish 
sorrow but would fill the earth with gladness. 
[19] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 



Envy, " withering at another's joy" and " hating 
that excellence it cannot reach," that mark of 
inferiority for which the great soul has neither 
time nor room, and which is quite incompatible 
with happiness, is ranked with murder, drunken- 
ness and every evil work, and unsparingly con- 
demned. Thrift is commended and the wastrel 
banned. We are warned that neither power, nor 
fame, nor even freedom from life's cares can bring 
real joy. Indeed, the teaching and example of 
Jesus, touching the bearing of the daily burden 
indicates that without it the heart must go 
unsatisfied. 

"If all the world were sunshine, 
Our faces would be fain 
To feel once more upon them 
The cooling plash of rain. 

"If all the world were music, 
Our hearts would often long 
For one sweet strain of silence, 
To break the endless song. 

"If life were always merry, 
Our souls would seek relief, 
And rest from weary laughter 
In the quiet arms of grief." 

We are reminded that the meek inherit the 
earth, the poor in spirit the Kingdom of heaven, 
and that it is the pure in heart who joy in the 
vision of God. 

Moreover, the whole trend of the Book with 
its steady refusal to overemphasize the material, 
makes for that simplicity which is so large a 
factor in happiness. Even the pessimist Scho- 

[20] 



Revelation and the Lower Self 

penhauer has noted that the Idyll, the only form 
of poetry which is used exclusively to por- 
tray felicity, reveals life always in its simplest 
form. In Lewis Carroll's " Through a Looking 
Glass/ ' we catch the reflection of the White 
Knight. His accoutrements are fearful and 
wonderful. His horse carries a bee hive, in the 
event of meeting homeless bees; a mouse- trap 
in the event of meeting predacious mice; while 
the steed's ankles are panoplied in case sharks 
should attack in force. But in spite of his equip- 
ment, or because of it, the Knight fai s of success. 
" Whenever the horse stopped he fell off in front, 
and when he went on again he fell off behind," not 
to mention a habit he had of falling sideways. It 
is a parable of life. We burden ourselves with the 
things which are supposed to bring happiness, 
only to find, whether or not we admit it, that 
happiness is precluded by them. I shall never 
forget a man who was my host on the wild plains 
of Saskatchewan, before the tide of immigration 
had set in from the States. He had once been 
prosperous, but was now reduced to the bare 
necessities of life, though rich still in health and 
peace and the deeper joys of living. We had 
watched a sunset of incredible splendor, and as 
the after-glow faded from lilac into lavender we 
turned to enter the house. He paused a moment 
on the threshold, then turned and said impress- 
ively " Blessed be nothing." We had little 
speech after that. There was nothing to say. 
For had he not revealed to me the deep secret 
of his life? " You ask for happiness " says Car- 

[.21] 



The Substance of Happiness 

lyle," 'Oh give me happiness ' and they hand you 
ever new varieties of covering for the skin, ever 
new kinds of supply for the digestive apparatus. 

Well, rejoice in your upholsteries and 
cookeries if so be they will make you ' happy.' 
Let the varieties of them be continual and in- 
numerable. In all things let perpetual change, 
if that is a perpetual blessing for you, be your 
portion instead of mine. Incur the prophetic 
curse and in all things in this sublunary world 
' make yourselves like unto a wheel. ' Mount into 
your railways; whirl from place to place at the 
rate of fifty or if you like five hundred miles an 
hour; you cannot escape from the inexorable, 
all-encircling ocean-moan of ennui. No; if you 
could mount to the stars and do yacht-voyages 
under the belts of Jupiter, or stalk deer on the 
ring of Saturn it would still be-girdle you. You 
cannot escape from it; you can but change your 
place in it without solacement except one mo- 
ment's. That prophetic Sermon from the Deeps 
will continue with you until you wisely interpret 
it and do it, or else till the Crack of Doom swallows 
it and you." 

Again, the Bible reveals the basis of physical 
health. . " A sound mind in a sound body," says 
John Locke, "is a short but full description of 
a happy state in this world." Dr. Johnson con- 
tended that illness makes a man a scoundrel. 
Sidney Smith speaks of a man whom most of us 
have known who " has not body enough to cover 
his mind decently with; his intellect is improp- 
erly exposed." Without doubt, good health is, 

[22] 



Rev elation and the Lower S elf 

for the majority of men the most important 
element in happiness. And the question which 
agitates us is seldom, though it should be often, 
how can we retain health, but always how can 
we regain it when once it is lost? With the allop- 
athist and the homeopathist we are all familiar. 
Comes now the bibliopathist asserting full ability 
in the premises. Eddyism, new thought, mental 
science, the Immanuel movement, presenting as 
they do such widely differing ideas that they 
should not be mentioned together thus without 
far more apology and explanation than we have 
space for, still agree in this: That a resident 
physician abides in every human body; that if 
he be free to act his ministrations are more im- 
portant than those of any other physician; and 
that his freedom to act depends upon whether or 
not the whole life of the organism is in harmony 
with the life of God. It is precisely this life of 
harmony with God which Revelation inculcates 
and makes possible, as does no other book. We 
have come to see that that bodily health is con- 
ditioned, to the highest degree, upon our states 
of mind. Our thoughts must be benevolent. 
" Had I my life to live over,' 7 says one, " I would 
praise more and blame less." " If we regard 
ourselves as free agents," says Mr. Arnold Bennett, 
" and the personalities surrounding us as the 
puppets of determinism, we shall have arrived 
at the working compromise from which the 
finest results of living can be obtained." Mr. 
Bennett confides to us that much of his wisdom 
in these matters is drawn from the Stoics (with 

[23] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

some reference to Mrs. Annie Besant), but prob- 
ably there is no more perfect admonition on the 
point than the words of Jesus, " Judge not, that 
ye be not judged. For with what measure ye 
meet, it shall be measured to you again." 

We have learned that we must think on our 
points of strength rather than our points of weak- 
ness. If our lungs are impaired we must fix 
attention upon some more normal organ, as the 
heart. If hearing is dulled, we may perhaps 
rejoice in good eyesight. If disordered nerves 
make life a burden, we must comfort ourselves 
with the strong probability that our more vital 
parts are in excellent working order. In short 
we must make practical application of Paul's 
principle, " Be not overcome of evil, but over- 
come evil with good," to the problem of bodily 
health. We have learned that our thoughts must 
be calm, without worry and without fear. Incom- 
parably greater than any other force of all time 
in the destruction of fear is Jesus' teaching of 
forgiveness, and of immortality. And when he 
said " Take no thought for your life, what ye 
shall eat or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your 
body, what ye shall put on . . . Behold the 
fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they 
reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly 
father feedeth them. . . . Consider the lilies, 
how they grow; they toil not, neither do they 
spin: and yet I say unto you that even Solomon 
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these, 
Wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the field 
which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the 

[24] 



Rev elation and the Lower Self 

oven, shall he not much more clothe you? . . . 
for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have 
need of all these things," — when He spoke thus 
He used words which, in their power to deliver 
from the thraldom of care, are potent beyond 
any which have fallen on the weary ears of men. 
Of more value than all drugs in all the drug- 
shops of the world are faith and hope and love. 
Of more value than all the teaching of all the 
medical schools under heaven are these seven 
words: Be good, and you shall be well. 

Again, the Bible reveals the principles on which 
a social structure consistent with happiness may 
be builded. 

There are certain common, elemental needs on 
which the bulk of human happiness depends. If 
these needs are met, we shall be reasonably happy; 
if they are unmet, happiness, while not impossible, 
is difficult. There is the need of food. The 
clergyman who asked his aged parishoner as she 
lay upon her deathbed, what in the long life now 
closing she was most thankful for, was a bit sur- 
prised when she answered, brightening, " My 
victuals, sir." The eye needs something good 
to look at; the ear needs something good to hear; 
the mind needs something with which it may 
worthily occupy itself; and the heart needs the 
unspeakable blessing of family life and love. 

There is need also for the great happiness of 
work, and with this thought we can afford to 
linger because work is in itself a thing of joy. It 
is a keen, rare joy, so long as it consists in the 
exercise of surplus energy. When we go beyond 
[25] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

the exercise of surplus energy, squandering prin- 
ciple instead of wisely spending interest, it becomes 
a drudgery and a curse. And we can afford to 
linger here, not only because, rightly ordered, 
work is itself a delight, — that which is irksome 
in youth becoming often the sole satisfaction of 
manhood — but because the whole subject of 
work is bound up so closely with the question of 
decent satisfaction of eye and ear and mind and 
affection. How shall we scheme life so that all 
shall have the joy of working enough, and none 
the misery of overwork; so that all shall not only 
create, but receive through their labor, such 
reward as makes possible the eye's desire for 
some at least of the beauties of nature and of 
art; of the ear's desire for the harmonies of music; 
of the mind's desire for lofty speech and noble 
books; of the heart's desire for family life from 
which love does not fly through the window as 
poverty stalks in at the doors? So far, society 
has no reason to be proud of its answer to the 
question. Recent figures indicate that there are 
some two and a half million children engaged in 
industry in the United States. Twenty-five 
dusky regiments, each a thousand strong could 
be mustered from the coal-mines and breakers. 
Eighty thousand are in the textile mills, and 
twenty thousand of these are under twelve years 
of age. Seven thousand, five hundred, are in the 
glass factories. Twelve thousand are in tobacco 
factories. Ten thousand are in the saw-mills. 
Forty-two thousand are in the messenger service, 
their work in many instances requiring them to 

[26] 



Revelation and the Lower S elf 

enter frequently saloons and houses of ill-fame; 
while every summer Sabbath morning when 
church-bells ring for Sunday-school, it is estimated 
that there are two hundred and fifty thousand 
caddies on the links. There are three hundred 
twenty five thousand unemployed men in Greater 
New York. In the under-world of London fifty 
thousand women toil for three cents an hour in 
hovels unfit for cattle, slaving at their work — 
and starving when there is none. " Who is 
responsible," says Mr. Lloyd-George passion- 
ately, in supporting his plan for old-age pensions, 
" for the scheme of things whereby one man is 
engaged through life in grinding labor to win a 
bare and precarious subsistence for himself, and 
when, at the end of his days, he claims at the 
hands of the country he served, a poor pension of 
eight pence a day, he can only get it through a 
revolution, and another man who does not toil 
receives every hour of the day, every hour of the 
night, whilst he slumbers, more than his poor 
neighbor receives in a whole year of toil? Where 
did the table of that law come from? Whose 
fingers inscribed it?" 

Professor Irving Fisher of Yale calculates that 
the annual child crop of the United States is 
worth seven billion dollars, and that forty-seven 
per cent of all who die under five years of age 
could be saved by an expenditure of twenty dollars 
for each. He further says that through unneces- 
sary industrial accidents, sickness due to overwork, 
and early old age due to over-strain, our army of 
toilers waste one million, three hundred thousand 

[27] 



The Substance of Happiness 

years of time annually. China seems continually 
emerging from famine, with hundreds dead. 
Millions in Russia live with so narrow a margin 
of sustenance that the failure of one crop brings 
them to starvation, and crop failures are of com- 
mon occurrence, though the Government strives, 
and sometimes successfully, to conceal the facts. 
It has been estimated recently after an exhaustive 
social survey in one of our great industrial centers, 
that only two per cent of the workers there have 
any margin between themselves and want. Seek- 
ing the supreme tragedy of the ages, we shall not 
find it in the works of Sophocles of Shakespeare 
or Ibsen, but in great manufacturing centers 
where men by thousands go each day to work 
haunted by the knowledge that if tomorrow 
health should fail or work be slack, they, and their 
wives and little ones must stand between the 
twin evils of hunger on the one hand, and charity 
on the other. Theirs it is, through all the years 
of life " to live miserable we know not why; to 
work sore and yet gain nothing; to be weary, 
heart- worn." 

If we ask what is to be done about it, there are 
three answers. The first is the answer of the 
comfortable — "do nothing," and they reiterate 
it until the more far-seeing among them discern 
a danger of losing their comforts, whereupon we 
hear the answer of the present day liberal-radicals 
in England, and of our own progressives. Indus- 
try must be purified and made more just to labor 
and capital alike, through a system of Govern- 
mental supervision. All economic effort is to 

L28] 



Revelation and the Lower Self 

become the business of the nation. Even Mr. 
Taft holds that unless "big business " can be 
made to behave, it must pass under Governmental 
control. Mr. Roosevelt would have a Govern- 
mental commission to undertake the supervision, 
regulation and control of great corporations, 
even to the control of "monopoly prices, ,, and 
" this control should indirectly or directly extend 
to dealing with all questions connected with their 
treatment of their employes, including the wages, 
hours of labor and the like;" while Mr. Wilson 
says, " Business is no longer in any proper sense 
a private matter. Our program, from which we 
cannot be turned aside is, that we are going to 
take control of our own economic life." All in 
all it would seem that a partnership between 
Government and capital, instead of a warfare, 
is at hand, in which capital is to be shorn of its 
perverseness, and the bright millennial goal of the 
Progressives attained. 

The third answer is the answer of the socialist, 
with whom, it is very evident, we must reckon 
more and more. He is impatient with the pro- 
gressive, declaring his scheme a mere palliative, 
a reform of capital for capital's sake; a mere 
scraping of the barnacles from the hull of the 
warship, an unlimbering of its batteries for the 
more effective bombardment of socialism itself. 
He says that undoubtedly these reforms will 
be finally accomplished for purely selfish reasons, 
without materially changing conditions; that in 
his program these things are merely secondary, 
the real aim being to strike at the root of the evil 
[29] 



The Substance of Happiness 



by complete emancipation of the producer, and 
entire abolition of the capitalistic system. " The 
legal constitution of every period/' says Rosa 
Luxemburg, " is solely a product of revolution. 
While revolution is the political act of creation, 
of class history, legislation is the continued politi- 
cal growth of society. The work of reform has in 
itself no driving force outside of the revolution. 

. . . Therefore the person who speaks for 
the method of legal reform instead of the conquest 
of political power and the overthrow of society, 
is not as a matter of fact, in a quieter, safer and 
slower way, moving toward the same goal, but a 
different goal altogether; namely, instead of 
bringing about a new social order, merely the 
accomplishment of unessential changes in the old 
one." 

The socialist believes that the worker produces 
a value equal to his daily wage in a very few hours ; 
that if he owned and controlled the means of 
production, land, machinery, tools, — he would 
need to work only so many hours as the produc- 
tion of the necessities of life for himself and 
family required. If in five hours, the worker 
produces value equal to his wages, it is evident 
that the value produced in each succeeding hour 
of the daily toil is a gift to his employer. If he 
works for ten hours, he has produced twice as 
much as he receives and the five hours " surplus 
value " is filched from him by " capital." Karl 
Marx does not hesitate to say that rent, interest 
and profits are unearned, and one of his modern 
disciples says: " It remains the one central fact 

[30] 



Revelation and the Lower Self 

of Capitalism, however, that a surplus value is 
created by the working class and taken by the 
exploiting class, from which develops the class 
struggle of our time." Moreover, the socialist 
has developed much keenness in answering the 
time-honored questions with which he is assailed. 
If asked concerning his relation to the church he 
says he, and not the average church member is 
the true follower of Christ. 

"Take then your paltry Christ, 
Your gentleman God. 
We want the carpenter's son, 
With his saw and hod." 

Asked concerning free-love he replies that ninety- 
five per cent of modern socialists condemn it. 
If we ask how the capitalistic system is to be 
abolished he says it is to be without violence, 
probably a confiscation by taxation. If we venture 
to remind him that even so it is unjust, he denies 
it and expresses the hope that the thing may be 
brought about by the voluntary surrender of 
capital. " As for taking such property from the 
owners," says Mr. H G. Wells, " why shouldn't 
we? The world has not only in the past taken 
slaves from their owners, with no compensation, 
or with meager compensation; but in the history 
of mankind, dark as it is, there are innumerable 
cases of slave-holders resigning their inhuman 
rights." Asked whether profits may not be the 
" wages of risk," the due return for the adventure 
of capital, he replies that unless society gave the 
capitalist a good chance he would not take it; 
that the laborer's risk is also great; and that the 
[31] 



The Substance of Happiness 

" wages of risk " for both are derived from labor. 
Asked if profit is not just reward for the capitalist's 
frugality in saving up his capital, he points out 
that the capitalist of the present day is not con- 
spicuous for frugality, and that, strive as he will, 
he is often unable to spend his income. Asked 
if profits may not be the " wages of superin- 
tendence/ ' the " rent of ability," he answers that 
for the most part, the management of modern 
industry is in the hands of salaried employes; 
while the profits, for the most part go to share- 
holders who have contributed no service to the 
industry. We are also assured (though the 
explanations here are extremely difficult to recon- 
cile with the main contention) that socialism 
does not contemplate the abolition of private 
property, nor the mechanical equality of men, 
nor the communistic levelling of incomes. What- 
ever the defects of the system may be, it is surely 
not all devoid of reason, and most emphatically 
is not the thing of torch and pillage, dynamite and 
blood, which some have believed it to be. 

Listening to these various answers we feel that 
each of them is inadequate. Desperate cases 
require desperate remedies, while these proposals 
of a shallow externalism, radical as some of them 
are, seem to suggest lozenges for lock-jaw, or 
peppermint essence for broken legs. What 
answer hath the Son of Man made? Capitalism 
claims His support because He has said " Unto 
every one that hath shall be given, and he shall 
have abundance; but from him that hath not 
shall be taken away, even that which he hath." 

[32] 



Revel at ion and the Lower Self 



Socialism claims His support because once he 
told the story of a man who, hiring laborers for 
his vineyard, gave the same wage to each, regard- 
less of the number of hours each had worked. But 
the fact that these two passages are flatly con- 
tradictory if we regard them as deliverances upon 
an economic question leads us to conclude im- 
mediately that Jesus spoke in neither instance of 
industrial, but purely of spiritual concerns. For 
these passages are not contradictory in the spirit- 
ual sphere, but equally true. To him that hath 
the things of God, are given the things of God, 
while from him that hath them not, they are 
taken away; and the parable of the laborers in 
the vineyard reminds us that in the world of the 
spirit, it is not service, but motive, that is reckoned 
to us, — not what we do, but what we will to do. 
" 'Tis not what man does which exalts him, but 
what man would do," says Browning's David 
and his Abt Vogler declares: 

" There shall never be one lost good, . . . 
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; 
Not its semblance but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist 
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard : 
Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by." 

To Jesus, the mere form of society, whether 
individualist or collectivist, capitalistic or social- 
istic, was a matter of indifference, but its spirit 
was a matter of infinite concern. He would not 
be a judge or divider over men in questions 

[33] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

relating to property, but He burned to impart 
those principles without which no social question 
can be rightly settled, and with which every 
social question can be rightly settled, — " Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thy self." " Whatso- 
ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
even so to them." And because it hath pleased 
God to " gather in one all things in Christ, both 
which are in heaven, and which are on earth" 
we move toward a golden age of brotherhood and 
peace. Whether it shall be an age in which the 
present system is perfected until socialism is 
unnecessary, or whether even now there forms in 
the womb of the present a future for the socialist's 
radiant dream, who shall presume to say? But 
whether the present system shall persist, or be 
superseded by another, the only hope for the 
success of either lies in the transmutation of 
Christ's teaching into character. 

" If you and I and all men else 
Were filled of God with loving sacrifice, 
Then joyousness and peace would fill the world 
As oceans fill their all-enclosing shores, 
Or as the sun, unclouded, fills the skies with light." 

Lastly, the Bible gives us a firm assurance of 
the moral order of the universe. The world we 
know obeys neither the Decalogue, nor the 
Sermon on the Mount; nor is there immediate 
prospect of its doing so. It has not conquered 
disease of the body through health of the soul. 
Every day a thousand fall at our side, and ten 
thousand at our right hand, among them our 

[34] 



Rev elation and the Lower Self 

best-beloved. The teaching of Jesus has not yet 
produced the ideal commonwealth, and the 
tarrying is long. How shall we withstand those 
floods of grief which soon or late assail us all, 
sweeping happiness away, wrecking to pitiable 
driftwood our puny theories of it? When we ask 
whether light will ever follow the darkness, and 
peace come out of pain; or whether life is only a 
wild welter beneath the dumb and heartless 
stars, what answer comes? This: God made all, 
rules all, works through all, to purposes of perfect 
love. 

Robert Louis Stevenson tells of a ship storm- 
caught off a rocky coast, and driven inland until 
death for all seems imminent. The passengers 
huddle in fear below until one finds courage for 
the perilous climb to the pilot-house, where he 
sees the steersman lashed to the wheel. Becoming 
aware of the frightened passenger, the steersman 
turns to him and smiles, while he steadily swings 
the ship toward the safety of the deeper seas. 
And the passenger goes below to tell his comrades 
" All's well. I have seen the pilot's face, and he 
smiled!" To believe that One is at the helm, and 
that He smiles, is to possess the largest single 
factor in the happiness of both the lower and the 
higher life. It thrusts all the evil, all the wrong, 
all the sorrow of the universe back into its fitting 
place as something foreign, not omnipotent, and 
finally to be destroyed. It makes joy gigantic, 
and sadness small. It enables the statesman to 
rise above the red triumph of anarchy in the 
hour when national foundations seem shaken and 

[35] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

to declare " God reigns, and the Government at 
Washington still lives." It enables men and 
women to face, unmoved and strong of heart, 
their unknown destinies, saying : 

" I go to prove my soul! 
I see my way as birds their trackless way. 
I shall arrive! what time, what circuit first, 
I ask not. . . . 

In some time, his good time I shall arrive: 

He guides me and the bird. In his good time." 

It enables a thousand thousand fathers and a 
thousand thousand mothers who stumble tear- 
blinded to the silent city to lay their loved ones 
down in slumber till the resurrection morning, 
to turn and gaze in each other's streaming eyes, 
and still through quivering lips to say " It is 
all for the best — someway." All hope for the 
world's happiness lies in this Book, and nowhere 
else. Let us love it, learn it, live it, spread it, 
until the day break, and the shadows flee away ! 



[36] 



Ill 

(c) REVELATION AND THE HIGHER SELF 



[37] 



' "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: 
not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your 
heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." — John 14: 27. 



[38] 



Ill 



REVELATION AND THE HIGHER SELF 

IN the first sermon of this series we raised the 
question whether or not the quest of happiness 
was a legitimate one. In answering it we pointed 
out that with each of us there is a lower self, a 
self of self-interest, conditioned by physical law; 
and a higher self, unselfish, spiritual, and trans- 
cending physical law. Our question now is: 
What has the Bible revealed for the enhancement 
of the happiness of the highest self. 

First, revelation assumes that happiness is 
attainable. Upon the plains of Shinar, Job wins 
through unspeakable pain and disaster to the 
plains of peace. Paul and Silas in that inner 
dungeon among the sewer pipes of Philippi, 
their backs raw from scourging, and their feet 
thrust into the cruel stocks, shake the midnight 
with their hymns of praise. It has not been other- 
wise with the saints of a later day. Though John 
Bunyan has been denied an appeal, and has been 
delivered again to his jailer, his spirit scorns 
confinement. It transforms his cell into a palace 
beautiful. His warden is now an Apollyon, and 
now a Greatheart. The hills about are the Delec- 
table Mountains. The stream yonder is the river 

[39] 



The Substance of Happiness 

of the water of life, and the town, small, yet 
large enough to mirror all the joys and sorrows 
and passions and renunciations of the world, is 
the town of Vanity Fair. George Matheson felt 
the sun failing before his university course was 
completed, and a little later even the stars failed 
in his ray less night of blindness. Yet you cannot 
read his singing prose or his exulting poetry with- 
out being made aware that his life was filled 
with joy. His preaching was an out-pouring of the 
soul like the lark's overflowing music as it mounts 
into the blue, and when he laid down his work 
he said: " My life has been an obstructed life, 
a circumscribed life, but a life of boundless san- 
guineness, a life of quenchless hopefulness, a life 
which, even at the time of abandoned work said 
not " Good-night " but " Good-morning." Fol- 
lowing the gleam of God's revealed will, even 
though it be " through peril, toil and pain," 
myriads have found peace. The quest for the 
happiness of the higher self is not, therefore, a 
hopeless one. Each of us may hope to reach the goal. 

But how? Certainly the Bible lays down no 
rules for pursuing happiness. We are led to infer 
that if we cease to chase it we may catch it. Not 
once do we read " Be ye happy, as I am happy," 
but we do read " Be ye holy, as I am holy." It 
is when we elevate life from the plane of happiness- 
seeking to the plane of duty, that happiness 
begins. He who would make life a factory for 
happiness shall find his product eaten of dry rot, 
and though there be but one stockholder and 
that himself, he shall receive not one dividend. 
[40] 



Rev elation and the Higher Self 



He who sees that life is duty, and does the duty 
that he sees, will find happiness in plenty, as a 
fine by-product which neither moth nor rust can 
corrupt, nor thieves break in and steal. 

Under the California sun the wheat-fields roll 
in golden oceans, waiting the day of harvest. 
But see! there are flowers among the grain, rich 
as blood, red as the hearts of rubies, flaming 
glory-spots of color in the billowing yellow. 
" How did you produce such poppies," you ask 
the ranchman. " Oh, I didn't produce them," 
he answers. " I sowed the wheat and — the 
flowers came." It is a parable of life. The 
crimson happiness grows in the grain-fields of 
usefulness; the bloom of joy in the furrows of 
unselfish toil. And, if we can remember that 
giving happiness to others is always a part of 
duty, we shall have taken a long step toward 
our goal. Happiness is by radiation, never by 
absorption. 

" Not once or twice in our rough island-story, 
The path of duty was the way to glory : 
He that walks it, only thirsting 
For the right, and learns to deaden 
Love of self, before his journey closes, 
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting 
Into glossy purples, which outredden 
All voluptuous garden-roses. 
Not once or twice in our fair island-story, 
The path of duty was the way to glory : 
He, that ever following her commands, 
On with toil of heart and knees and hands, 
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won 
His path upward, and prevail'd, 
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scal'd 
Are close upon the shining table-lands 
To which our God Himself is moon and sun." 

[41] 



The S ub stance of Happiness 

To elevate life to the plane of duty! Again our 
question must be " how?" What is involved in 
the process? First, there must be a letting go — 
renunciation. Once a rich young man came to 
Jesus; a young man who was not only rich but 
good as well. He had kept the commandments 
from his youth up, but he was not happy. Jesus 
told him to sell all, and following Him, to make 
Poverty his bride. He said this because He 
loved the young man and earnestly desired his 
happiness. 

Let us beware of taking this incident too figur- 
atively. Wealth, unless held and administered 
for the benefit of others, is quite incompatible 
with happiness. The man who leaps from the 
sinking craft, sinks if cumbered by his belt of 
gold. The miser counting his yellow treasure is 
slain by the descending avalanche which he him- 
self has piled. Because it bars us back from the 
simplicities of life, and shields us from the good 
roughnesses of life, and shuts us away from the 
common tendernesses of life, wealth wrecks the 
wings on which we might have risen into joy. 
But let us also beware of taking the incident too 
literally. It is that thing, whether it be riches 
or something very different, which stands between 
us and our best selves, which we must renounce. 
And the thing which we must renounce, and yet 
do not renounce, becomes our cherished sin, 
poisoning the springs of happiness. 

" In the wood the dead trees stand 
Dead and living, hand to hand. 
Being winter, who can tell 
Which is sick and which is well? 

[42] 



Revelation and the Higher Self 

Standing upright day by day 
Sullenly their hearts decay 
Till a wise wind lays them low 
Prostrate — empty — then we know. 

"So through forests of the street 
Men stand dead upon their feet 
Corpses without epitaph; 
God withholds his wind of wrath, 
So we greet them with a smile 
Dead and doomed a weary while, 
Only sometimes through their eyes 
We can see the worm that plies." 

Terrible lines but true to life. There are men who, 
for the sake of a transient pleasure, cling to that 
which slays real happiness forever. Christ who 
knows our hearts so well, has given us the unflinch- 
ing truth. " If thy right hand offend thee, cut 
it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable 
for thee that one of thy members should perish, 
and not that thy whole body should be cast into 
hell. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it 
out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable 
for thee that one of thy members should perish, 
and not that thy whole body should be cast into 
hell." To renounce the unworthy utterly; to 
renounce that natural life which is self-centered, 
and to substitute for it that new divine center 
which appears as we merge our wills with the 
Infinite — this only is the whole meaning of 
renunciation, in the mind of Jesus. 

Something more is required, however, than mere 
letting go, or renunciation. There must be appre- 
hension — a laying hold. The advice to the rich 
young man was not only to sell and distribute to 
the poor, but to " follow me." Renunciation 

[43] 



The Substance of Happiness 

is negative. Apprehension, following, believing 
on Him, is positive. 

What is it to believe on Jesus Christ? When I 
entered my study this morning it was cold, but 
a flood of sunlight poured through the window. 
I stood viewing that radiance, and I called to 
mind the facts which we learn as school boys 
concerning its source. I remembered that it was 
ninety millions of miles away; that around it, 
ceaselessly, " rank on rank, the army of unalter- 
able law/' the planets wheel; that it lifts oceans 
to the skies, to be poured out upon the continents; 
that it lays down light and heat and power in 
the store-houses of the earth to be led forth at 
man's resurrection-command into the wide and 
vital activities of society. And then I said: 
" Knowing so much about the sun, why not 
know the sun?" and straightway I walked into 
the sunshine. Its warmth flowed round me like 
a mother's love, and it warmed me, changed me, 
so far as I was able to receive it, into the warm- 
ness of the sun itself. To believe on Jesus 
Christ is to place your life, by deliberate act of 
will, so completely beneath His influence, that 
by His power and love He is able to transform 
your whole self steadily, from glory unto glory, 
into the likeness of His own perfection. 

From this renunciation and apprehension there 
follows as the night the day that conscreation 
to unselfish service which we have already seen 
to be essential to our peace. Asceticism sought 
happiness through renunciation, but it failed in 
apprehension, and its consecration was not out- 

[44] 



Revelation and the Higher Self 

flowing but ingrowing. Henry Suso, a German 
mystic of the fourteenth century, has written 
his autobiography, in the third person, and from 
it I now quote. " He sought by many devices 
how he might bring his body into subjection. He 
wore for a long time a hair shirt and an iron chain, 
until the blood ran from him, so that he was 
obliged to leave them off. He secretly caused an 
undergarment to be made for him; and in the 
undergarment he had strips of leather fixed, into 
which a hundred and fifty brass nails, pointed and 
filed sharp, were driven, and the points of the nails 
were always turned toward his flesh. He had this 
garment made very tight, and so arranged . . . 
that the pointed nails might be driven into his 
flesh. Now in summer, when it was hot, and he 
was very tired and ill from his journeyings, . . . 
he would sometimes, as he lay thus in bonds, and 
oppressed with toil, and tormented also by noxious 
insects, cry aloud, and give way to fretfulness, 
and twist round and round in agony, as a worm 
does when run through with a pointed needle. 
It often seemed to him as if he were lying upon 
an ant-hill, for the torture caused by the insects; 
for if he wished to sleep, or had fallen asleep, they 
vied with one another. ... He devised 
something farther — two leathern loops into which 
he put his hands, and fastened one on each side 
his throat, and made the fastenings so secure 
that even if his cell had been on fire about him, 
he could not have helped himself. This he con- 
tinued until his hands and arms had become 
almost tremulous with the strain, and then he 
[45] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

devised something else: two leather gloves; and 
he caused a brazier to fit them all over with sharp- 
pointed brass tacks, and he used to put them on 
at night, in order that if he should try while 
asleep to throw off the hair undergarment, or 
relieve himself from the gnawing of the vile 
insects, the tacks might then stick into his body. 
And so it came to pass. If ever he sought to 
help himself with his hands in his sleep, he drove 
the sharp tacks into his breast, and tore himself, 
so that his flesh festered. When after many 
weeks, the wounds had healed, he tore himself 
again and made fresh wounds." In imitation of 
the sorrows of his Lord Suso made himself a cross 
with thirty protruding iron needles and nails, 
which he bore between his shoulders day and 
night. Again I quote his words: " The first 
time he stretched out this cross upon his back 
his tender frame was struck with terror at it, and 
he blunted the sharp nails slightly against a 
stone. But soon, repenting of this womanly 
cowardice, he pointed them all again with a 
file, and placed once more the cross upon him. 
It made his back, where the bones are, bloody 
and seared. ... If anyone touched him 
unawares, or pushed against his clothes, it tore 
him. ... In winter he suffered very much 
from frost. If he stretched out his feet they lay 
bare on the floor and froze, if he gathered them 
up the blood became all on fire in his legs, and 
this was a great pain. His feet were full of sores, 
his legs dropsical, his knees bloody and seared, 
his loins covered with scars from the horse-hair, 

[46] 



Revelation and the Higher Self 

his body wasted, his mouth parched with intense 
thirst, and his hands tremulous with weakness. 
. . . Throughout all these years he never 
took a bath; and this he did in order to mortify 
his comfort-seeking body." 

Did Suso attain happiness? No. We read that 
he constantly cried out in agony: " Alas, gentle 
God, what a dying is this !" And having practised 
self-torture until his fortieth year, he abandoned 
it in order to save his life, which he thereafter 
devoted to practical religious work. 

How utterly different was Jesus' manner of 
life. Once in describing Himself He says: " I 
am the Vine." Now it is true that the vine must 
suffer much. " The summer corn shoots up 
straight and free in one quick growth, and has 
its day, and is done, and springs no more." The 
olive spreads its boughs in the tender air, and 
with never a leaf lost, flowers and fruits in per- 
petual peace. It is different with the vine. Its 
life is never one of pleasure, or of ease. It may 
not grow as it will, like trailing leaves. Its time 
of flower is a small part of its life, and it must 
bear fruit almost before the flower has had its 
day. It does not grow free, but is tied to a stake, 
and if the arms stretch out they are fastened as 
on a cross. It draws its life sometimes from flinty 
soils, and when life's gladness thrills through it 
for a moment, then comes the husbandman with 
shears and pruning-hook, who leaves behind him 
a trail of bleeding limbs. The more the vine 
grows, the more it bears, and the more it bears 
the more closely is it bound. As the summer 
[47] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

ends the long strivings are culled, rough feet 
tread the wine-press, and the vine has come to 
its end. And yet it is not the end. For the vine 
must endure throughout the storms of winter, 
and repeat next year the pain and toil of this. 

Thus Christ indicates His sufferings when He 
calls Himself " the Vine"; sufferings not greater 
perhaps than those of Suso, and many another 
grim torturer of self. But mark the end for which 
each endured. Suso suffered for self; Jesus 
suffered for others : 

" The Vine from every living limb bleeds wine; 
Measure thy life by loss instead of gain; 
Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth 
For love's strength standeth in love's sacrifice; 
And whoso suffers most hath most to give." 

There is no such thing as selfish happiness. In 
the unalterable grammar of life God hath sun- 
dered that adjective and that noun, and no man 
may join together what God hath put asunder. 
Suso suffering for self, found only suffering. 
Jesus suffering for others found a peace more 
precious than all the gifts of earth. 

If, then, the happiness of the higher self is 
found through letting go of self and laying hold 
of Christ, and in unselfish service, in what will 
it consist? 

First, in a power for our weakness ; an adequacy 
for our insufficiency. Observing Christ's laws, 
we receive from Him the power necessary for 
their continued observance. Beholding Him, 
listening to Him as He holds aloft His high ideals 

[48] 



Rev elation and the Higher Self 

of life our question is: " Who is sufficient for 
these things, " and the only answer is " Myself." 
" I am the Way/' he tells his disciples, and in that 
last hour of their loneliness, when their insuffi- 
ciency pressed mountain-heavy on their hearts, 
He told them that in all their toil, weakness, dis- 
couragement, scourging, stoning, rejection and 
martyrdom, He would be with them, even unto 
the end of the world. To require us to live the 
Christ-life without the constant impartation of 
the Christ-power is to mock our infirmities. 
Receiving that power we can do all things through 
Him who strengthened us. 

We receive also, even in our pains and sorrows 
those compensating values which, while they do 
not remove our distresses, enable us to live above 
them. " Who shall separate us from the love of 
Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecu- 
tion, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 
Nay, in all these things we are more than con- 
querors through him that loved us. For I am 
persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, 
nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, 
nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor 
any other creature, shall be able to separate us 
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord." 

We are delivered from the power of fear. There 
is a fear of the unknown which is a primal 
instinct. 

"Through the jungle very softly, flits a shadow and a sigh — 
He is Fear, little Hunter, he is fear! 
Very softly down the glade runs a waiting watching shade, 

[49] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

And the whisper spreads and widens far and near; 
And the sweat is on thy brow, for he passes even now — 
He is Fear, O little Hunter, he is Fear." 

There is a fear, inseparable perhaps from fear of 
the unknown, marching always one pace to the 
rear of guilt: 

"Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all." 

But this fear is lost, as God is seen to stand be- 
hind the unknown, not a tyrant, cruel and capri- 
cious, but an Infinite Love whose Son has borne 
our penalty on His Cross. And the other fear, — 
that Great Fear of death, is lost in the assurance 
of immortality. We need not fear the thwarting 
of the long-cherished plan, for we may finish 
yonder what we began here. We need not fear 
that separations here are final — 

" Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress trees. 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play." 

For we know that yonder the great and never- 
ending union will begin. We need not fear that 
the earthly love whose satisfaction is here denied, 
will forever be a bitter memory, for in that future 
where there is neither marrying nor giving in 
marriage, God hath prepared some better thing 
for us. The middle-aged man in Browning's 
poem who loved the youthful Evelyn Hope 
finds that her death does not close, but rather 
opens wide the path which shall lead him to her 
side in God's good time. 

[50] 



Rev elation and the Higher Self 

" Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope? 

What, your soul was pure and true, 
The good stars met in your horoscope, 

Made you of spirit, fire and dew — 
And, just because I was thrice as old 

And our paths in the world diverged so wide, 
Each was nought to each, must I be told? 

We were fellow mortals, nought beside? 

"No, indeed! for God above 

Is great to grant, as mighty to make, 
And creates the love to reward the love: 

I claim you still, for my own love's sake! 
Delay *d it may be for more lives yet, 

Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few: 
Much is to learn, much to forget 

Ere the time be come for taking you. 

"So hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep: 
See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand! 
There, that is our secret : go to sleep ! 
You will wake, and remember, and understand. 

The power for right living, which is Christ's 
gift of Himself; and the gift of His love which 
compensates for all our sorrows; and the flight 
of fear; and the certainty of life beyond life, 
blends in that peace which is more than any 
happiness, even the peace which was His, and 
which he longs to give His disciples. Anxiety 
flees now, for God cares. Fear flees, for we know 
the perfect love which casteth out fear. Pain is 
baffled as we glory in tribulations, and long 
with Paul, to fill up that which is lacking of the 
afflictions of Christ. Failure cannot be, for we 
are one with God who faileth not. And we come 
to that joy which is not alone for the saints and 
the great ones of the earth, but for each of us. 
A minister of a city church noticed on his 
[51] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

frequent walks through a certain suburb, that the 
street was particularly clean, and he was drawn 
into conversation with the old man who swept 
it. Through many talks together, the story of 
his life was revealed. He had been a school 
master in a country village; a teacher in the 
village academy; he had married and had been 
promoted to the principalship of the graded 
schools. A last illness had come to his wife, the 
angel of death had won the victory, and he had 
" unclasped his arms to let the winged spirit 
fly." Afterward came his own long illness, his 
twisted face, and the loss of his position. Then 
pride drove him from the scene of his success and 
happiness into the obscurity of the city. The 
politicians, he said, had given him his position 
because the pay was so small that no one else 
wanted it. He was lonely, but he had the memory 
of the pupils who had learned at his feet, and he 
rejoiced in their success. The street-sweeping 
was hard, but he found God in the street in the 
morning, and when the sun set he wondered 
whether God had gone home from His work too. 
The evenings were not altogether hard, for he 
had his books, and he would light his lamp, and 
read and dream, and forget his weariness, while 
the face of his loved and lost came back to smile 
at him. And summing up the life which seemed 
so bare and empty he declared: " Yes, I am very 
happy." Men and women striving for happiness 
in a thousand feverish ways of wealth and luxury 
and preferment and self-seeking, I bid you sit 
today at the feet of this sweeper of the streets 

[52] 



Revelation and the Higher Self 

who had translated into daily living those mighty- 
words of Dante: " His will is our peace." 

" But," we ask, " is there no other way of 
highest happiness than this? Is there no way less 
dismal and irksome than that of renunciation, 
and faith and service?" It is a fair question, but 
with it we must always, ask another: " Has any 
other way ever worked?" 



[53] 



IV 

(d) THE JOY OF OUR LORD 



[55] 



" My joy." — James 15: 11. 

" Rejoice with me." — Luke 15: 6. 

" In that hour Jesus rejoiced." — Luke 10:21. 



[56] 



IV 



THE JOY OF OUR LORD 

"*TpHESE things have I spoken unto you, says 
Jesus, " that my joy might remain in you." 
Was He then, a man of joy? We are all familiar 
with the title " Man of sorrows." We have read 
it in Isaiah's weeping prophecy, beheld it in a 
hundred sad-faced pictures of our Lord, heard it 
in the wailing solo of Handel's " Messiah," and 
as we have followed Him along the flinty paths 
which led through rejection and mockery to 
Gethsemane and Calvary we have never ques- 
tioned its appropriateness. But this is a partial 
view of Jesus and requires correction by a con- 
sideration of His happiness. His sorrow was 
great but transient; His joy was profound and 
eternal. " The tremendous figure which fills 
the Gospel towers in this respect, as in every 
other," says a brilliant English writer, "above all 
the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. 
. . . He never concealed His tears; He 
showed them plainly in His open face at any daily 
sight, such as the far sight of His native city. 
Yet He concealed something. ... He never 
restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the 
front steps of the temple, and asked men how 

[57] 



The Substance of Happiness 

they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. 
Yet He restrained something. I say it with 
reverence; there was in that shattering person- 
ality a thread that must be called shyness. There 
was something that He covered constantly by 
abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There 
was some one thing too great for God to show us 
when He walked upon our earth; and I have 
sometimes fancied that it was His mirth/ ' 

He thought in terms of joy, for when the 
scribes and Pharisees blamed Him because his 
disciples were less grave than John's and less 
given to fasting, He answered them in a figure 
from the joyful wedding ceremony, and in so 
doing gave joy as the key-note of His kingdom. 
" Can the children of the bridechamber fast," 
He says, " while the bridegroom is with them?" 
He returns to this figure often. He uses it affec- 
tionately, exultantly, as if He would fain substi- 
tute the joy of His kingdom — its music and 
light and love — for all the gray sorrows of man- 
kind. Now it is a wedding supper for a king's 
son to which all, even the hitherto forgotten and 
forlorn, are finally invited. Again it is a wedding 
feast which, bringing gladness to the five wise 
virgins who are ready to go in, brings only woe 
to those against whose entrance the door is shut. 

He not only thought and spoke in terms of joy, 
but He gave j oy . The failure of the wine at Cana's 
wedding feast was little less than a tragedy in 
that simple household, and shadows must have 
fallen on many faces when it was realized that 
the gossip of tomorrow would be all of the host's 

[58] 



The Joy of Our Lord 



failure to provide hospitality due to his guests 
by immemorial custom. This first miracle of 
Jesus, the changing of water into wine, was done 
that unclouded gladness might fill the hour. 
We are told that Zaccheus received Him gladly, 
which could hardly have been the case if the 
face Jesus lifted to him as he crouched in the 
branches of the sycamore had not revealed a 
smile, and if He had not radiated joy as He 
crossed the threshold of that lonely publican. 
When He was at the descent of the mount of 
Olives " The whole multitude began to rejoice," 
and when He entered the temple courts those 
hallowed precincts rang with the voices of little 
children crying out in sheer delight. Who can 
imagine the happiness He brought to the friends 
in Bethany, and to those other, unmentioned 
homes that sheltered Him? " He thus traversed 
Galilee," says Renan, " in the midst of a con- 
tinual feast. When He entered a home it was 
considered a joy and a blessing." And He not 
only thought in terms of joy, and bestowed joy, 
but He gave directions for getting joy. When 
He had washed His disciples' feet, thus putting 
into one amazing object-lesson all His precepts 
of loving-service He said to them: " If ye know 
these things," the things of service and sacrifice, 
" happy are ye if ye do them." 

The great obvious joy, though not the greatest, 
ultimate joy of Jesus' life was that of seeking and 
finding the lost. The lost, in His thought, were 
the masses of Palestine, who, unshepherded by 
their hireling priests, had wandered from the fold. 

[59] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

He had no blame for the sheep. It was all the 
fault of the shepherds. Truth had been revealed; 
the hierarchy had hidden it. The green meadows 
lay all open to the skies, and the still waters sang 
of security and peace, but the leaders of the 
flock forbade them to go in and out and find 
pasture. Judaism at best was incomplete, tem- 
porizing, a divine make-shift until the fulness of 
time should come, a seed-bed from which fruit 
and grain and flower might be reaped unless 
tares should spring up from some enemy's sow- 
ing. But the tares had been sown, by enemies in 
the guise of friends, and the men and women 
among whom Jesus moved were without God 
and without hope in the world. His swelling joy 
of finding, of rescue, of re-shepherding, He told 
to His critics and to all men in simple stories. 
There was the story of the silver piece, so pre- 
cious to her who lost it that she must fight a 
candle and sweep the house, and destroy all its 
wonted order until she found it. " And when 
she hath found it, she calleth her friends, and her 
neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; 
for I have found the piece which I had lost." 
And there was the story of the lost sheep, and of 
him who, staggering with exhaustion brought 
in the lamb at dawn and called upon his neigh- 
bours to rejoice with him. But they could not 
rejoice. For while he sought, they slept; and 
when he thrilled with the exquisite joy of finding 
the perishing, they said: " A little sleep, a little 
slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep." 
And we can never know this joy of Jesus until we 

[60] 



The Joy of Our Lord 

like Him have sought the lost, through toil and 
tears. 

In the foregoing sermons we have spoken of 
the higher and the lower selves, and have sought 
the grounds of happiness for each. Does the 
life of Jesus endorse our conclusions? Does it 
illustrate and attest, or does it deny and refute 
what has been said? 

Certainly He observed all those fundamental 
moral laws whose violation brings unhappiness 
to the lower self. He never knew the spiritual 
distress of an upbraiding conscience, nor the phys- 
ical distress of an abused and rebellious organ. 
He never asked pardon of God, nor medicine of 
men. Luke, who as a physician would not have 
missed an opportunity to chronicle the bodily 
ills of Jesus tells only how He healed the diseases 
of others. He believed that a social structure 
raised on the foundation of His principles would 
be a fit environment for happy living, and He 
believed it so thoroughly that He spoke always 
of the foundation, never of the structure. His 
faith in the moral order — that faith which is 
perhaps the most important single element for 
the happiness of both the lower and the higher 
self — was sure, and that sure conviction spoke 
in syllables than which the world has heard 
nothing more audacious. " Heaven and earth 
shall pass away, but my words shall not pass 
away." 

Think of it! A peasant from the hill town of 
Nazareth turns wanderer and comes at length 
to the Mount of Olives where the Holy City, 
[61] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

behind the bulwark of its hills, lies, seemingly 
impregnable, at his feet. Those hills were Nature's 
fortresses to guard the city against war's deso- 
lation and the tooth of time. All about lay the 
solid world, stretching beyond the far horizons 
to other more remote horizons, rock-ribbed, 
mountain-weighted. " It shall pass away," he 
says, " but my words shall not pass away." Is 
there aught more stable than the world? Is 
aught more evanescent than a word — a word 
of such a one as this, vibrating for an instant on 
the air and swiftly dying? The Jew said: " The 
words of Sinai, and the wilderness, and Canaan 
and Jerusalem shall stand, but the word of this 
blasphemer shall pass." The Roman said: " The 
edicts of Csesar shall survive the centuries. We 
shall write them for all time in fire and blood 
on lands yet undiscovered and nations yet un- 
born, but the words of this dreamer shall die." 
The scholar said: " The strength of the hills 
shall long remain, but the words of this unlettered 
one shall pass as rain passes from the crags." 
But what say you, O Man of the open sky? Which 
is stable, your word or the world? " The heavens 
shall wax old, as doth a vesture, and pass away 
with a great noise. The unplumbed sea shall 
yield its dead, and there shall be no more sea. 
The elements shall melt with fervent heat, the 
earth also and the things therein shall be burned 
up. The centuries shall die, and be as pallid 
ghosts of things forgot, but my words shall know 
no death. They shall live through time and 
through eternity." 

[62] 



The Joy of Our Lord 



If we think of His higher self we find that He 
never pursued happiness. He renounced heaven, 
and the common joys of earth. He came not to 
be served, but to serve. Aware of His immortality 
He thrust into a few last hours of dying agony, 
a glory of vicariousness which has awed and 
broken the hearts of men throughout the cen- 
turies. And through it all He bore a peace which 
the world could neither give nor take away. He 
always did what we have found to be essential 
to real and lasting peace: He rejoiced in the 
happiness of the lower self without hint of asce- 
ticism until it came in conflict with the happiness 
of the higher self, and then He sacrificed it swiftly 
and without regret. Life must have been 
sweet to Him, young in years as He was, and 
sound in body, but He steadfastly set His face 
to go to Jerusalem, saying that He must suffer 
many things and be slain; and in the very shadow 
of the Cross He conquered self, and became 
gladly obedient to the will of God. 

" Into the woods my Master went, 
Clean forspent, forspent. 
Into the woods my Master came, 
Forspent with love and shame. 
But the olives they were not blind to Him; 
The little gray leaves were kind to Him; 
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him 
When into the woods He came. 

"Out of the woods my Master went, 
And He was well content. 
Out of the woods my Master came, 
Content with death and shame." 

And that contentment found expression in the 
words: " Not as I will, but as thou wilt." 

[63] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 



Like every life immovably conditioned by great 
principles of truth, the life of Jesus was a balanced 
one. It was unique in its poise. It proclaimed 
always His fine sense of proportion. Without a 
fair measure of this sense, no life can be happy. 
Photographed through an arched hole in an 
iceberg — so Dr. Grenfell discovered — a ship 
appears no larger than a toy. Photographed some- 
what in front of the iceberg she stands forth in 
majesty, while the berg is seen across her spendid 
decks as a mere piece of floating ice. We must 
always consider what picture we desire, what 
picture is worth while, whether berg or boat. 
For that which finally appears upon the sensitized 
plate, Life, depends upon where Will and Judge- 
ment point the camera. His sense of proportion 
and relationship delivered Jesus from pessimism, 
and gave Him that sure faith in His ultimate 
triumph which fills us with amazement. To us, 
the closing days of His life seem black with dis- 
couragement. The multitudes had followed, 
but now they had deserted Him. Twelve men 
remained, one of them a traitor, and after all 
His patient teaching that last conference in the 
upper room reveals how pitifully little they had 
learned. The small group to whom His mission 
is committed is without money, learning, pres- 
tige or printing presses. Eleven men, they face 
the world's millions. With the message of an 
unknown carpenter of Nazareth, they confront 
the religions of cultured Greece, cruel Asia, hate- 
ful Judea and jealous Rome. They are 



[64] 



The Joy of Our Lord 

" Alone, alone, all, all alone, 
Alone on a wide, wide sea." 

And the sea is now one of the deadly baffling 
calm of indifference, and again a sea lashed into 
fury by hate and opposition. When the first 
enthusiasm of the disciples has passed the church 
will lose itself in the mazes of discussion, and a full 
thousand years will pass before the full meaning 
of His death is generally understood or declared. 
War and tumult; heresy and condemnation; 
schism and atheism will fill the centuries. Two 
thousand years will pass, and even then men 
shall witness to each other as they are witnessing 
today, that certain aspects of the Church's work 
make it all but impossible to believe in a divine 
superintendence; that the presence of a living 
Kingdom is obscured by its machinery, and often 
confounded with it; that the result of the most 
strenuous evangelical effort is pathetically meagre; 
that the black battalions marshalled by the night 
prevail all too often against the golden legions 
of the dawn; and that the hosts who should be 
moving to the conquest of the world for Christ, rot 
in barracks like the army of Hannibal in Capua. 

Yet his confidence in the final issue never wa- 
vered. He will not be discouraged by the waste 
of many precious seeds; by the tares which are 
to grow among the grain; by the treachery of 
appointed stewards; by the spiritual blindness 
of the wise and prudent; by the apathy of pro- 
fessed followers, or the hatred of open enemies. 
With undaunted hope he foresees a day when 
" The Son of Man shall come in the glory of his 
[65] 



The Substance of Happiness 

Father with his angels/ ' and " As the lightning 
cometh from the east, and is seen even unto the 
west," even so shall be the splendor of His ap- 
pearing. Before insurmountable obstacles He 
is an unconquerable optimist, and His optimism 
is based upon His sure knowledge of the relative 
significance of things. Let the future loom dark 
with all discouragement. Let the army be inade- 
quate, untrained and untried. Yet these things 
remained: The world's great need, His perfect 
fitness for that need, and the Omnipotent power 
and love whereby, in God's good time, the perfect 
fitness should replace the need profound. So He 
rested on the promise of the prophet: " He shall 
not fail nor be discouraged till He have set judg- 
ment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for 
his law"; while with passionate concentration 
He held the course marked out for Him by His 
Father's will. The wide world beckoned; He 
will stay in narrow Palestine. The play of intel- 
lect, the speculations of philosophy may charm; 
He will make righteousness His theme. Power 
may allure as when Satan from the mountain 
top shows and offers Him all the kingdoms of the 
earth; but His kingdom is not of this world. 
Ease, comfort, the love-warmed homes of men 
pleaded to cherish Him but still He answered 
them " Foxes have holes, and the birds of the 
air have nests; the Son of Man hath not where 
to lay His head; yet will He abide with the fowls 
and the lilies." And He went forward to His 
cross as one who lies down upon His bed at night 
in unshaken confidence of the coming dawn. 

[66] 



The Joy of Our Lord 

Once, and only once, are we told in so many 
words of an instance when Jesus rejoiced. It 
was when the seventy who had been sent on an 
itinerant mission return with tidings of success 
beyond all expectation. Let us study this inci- 
dent for the light it sheds upon the joy of our Lord. 
And let us study it by means of contrast. 

It is a gala day in Rome. The victorious leader 
of a Roman army is to be accorded a triumph in 
the Capital. Months, possibly years before, he 
went forth with gallant soldiers and ample equip- 
ment, nerved by pride of race; inspired by the 
prestige of his government; strongly confident 
of triumphant onslaught. Now, having slain 
five thousand or more of the enemy in a success- 
ful battle he awaits, just outside the city wall, 
the full honors due his deed. Through the gate 
of triumph the senate, city magistrates and 
prominent citizens stream out to welcome him. 
These take the lead in the procession which 
quickly forms. Before them lie tors open a way 
through the crowd. Behind them come the band 
of flute-players, next the booty from far-off, 
plundered peoples, next the subjugated kings 
and nobles, fettered and doomed to the Mamer- 
tine dungeons. After these come the oxen for 
sacrifice, with gilded horns and accompanied by 
priests. Finally, preceded by singers, instru- 
mentalists and jesters the triumphal chariot 
appears. The conqueror, clad in tunic and toga 
borrowed from the great statue of Jup'ter, holds 
before him an iron sceptre, eagle-crowned, while 
a public servant suspends above his honored 

[67] 



The Substance of Happiness 

head the corona triumphalis. From the Campus 
Martius through the Circus of Flaminius to the 
Porta Carmentalis, and thence by way of the 
Velabrum and the Circus Maximus, the Via 
Sacra and the Forum, the stately pageant moves 
onward to the Capitol. The temples are open and 
incense burns upon the altars. Everywhere 
buildings are festively adorned; everywhere men 
are shouting " Hail to the victor!' 7 Everywhere, 
before a spectacle which portrays little save 
insatiable Roman rapacity and love of conquest, 
the populace are wild with joy, and after the usual 
sacrifices to the pagan deity by the conqueror, 
they will rush upon the Coliseum in a frenzy of 
delight, for here the day will end in a mad orgy 
of blood and strife, as hundreds of pairs of glad- 
iators close in deadly combat. 

Jesus rejoiced when his seventy men, worn and 
travel-stained, came straggling back across the 
Galilean hills from the mission of love on which 
they had been sent. They had been commissioned, 
not to slay but to heal. Their equipment was of 
the slightest, for they wore no shoes, but sandals 
befitting men of poverty. Their message was not 
war, but peace — peace with God, peace with 
conscience, peace of discipleship to one who was 
master, not of slaughter, but of sympathy. They 
were to be as lambs among wolves, not as wolves 
among lambs. They were not to assault, but to 
endure persecution and tribulation. They were 
to instill gratitude into men's minds, not fear, 
and the booty borne away was to be the memory 
of God's power, and of their own deeds of love. 

[68] 



The Joy of Our Lord 



As we view these two processions we see the 
core of two contrasting civilizations, we hear two 
radically divergent theories of life. Rome wel- 
comes with all honors those who go forth to slay; 
Jesus welcomes those who go forth to make alive. 
Their success is the ground of His great rejoicing. 
" While you have seen the devils subject unto 
you/' He says in effect, " I have seen Satan him- 
self as lightning fall from heaven. Your work 
shall lay the prince of evil low at last." By men 
like these, humble, loyal and devoted to their 
invincible Captain, His truth would be spread 
through every land, the meek would become more 
terrible than the proud, and love, the only weapon 
of universal conquest, would master the masters 
of the world. It was over this prophetic triumph 
of goodness that He "rejoiced in spirit, " and 
when He had given thanks to His Father that the 
deep things of His kingdom were revealed to 
"babes," to those of simple faith, — to that 
child-likeness which is universal, immortal, and 
omnipotent, and which lies beneath all transient 
glosses of culture and condition, — His joy found 
utterance, not in a proclamation of some new 
subjugation by brute force, but in those deathless 
words: " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my 
yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek 
and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto 
your souls." 



[69] 



V 

(e) ENTER THOU! 



[71] 



" Enter thou into the joy of thy lord" 

— Matthew 25: 31. 



[72] 



V 



ENTER THOU! 

WRITING the last sermon there was a cer- 
tain temptation to say that the source of 
Jesus' joy was just " love in action." This 
sermon, then, as suggested by the text above, 
would have been simply an admonition to put 
love in action, and so to enter into joy. Thus 
we would have had the matter in a nutshell. 
But the matter is bigger than a nut, and quite 
defies an easy simplifying. First, because the 
joy of our Lord goes back of the joy of finding 
and welcoming the lost, back of all that joyous, 
devoted activity which, in our thought, is always 
inseparable from His life. It would be more 
nearly true to say that His deeds were the effect, 
or the expression of, His inner joy, than to say 
that His deeds produced His joy. His gladness 
flowed from springs more hidden and remote, as 
His clear perception of a moral order, and His 
clear conviction of immortality. He was in 
harmony with the one; He was consciously 
destined for the other. He was literally and 
perfectly one with God. 

Second, our entrance into His joy is compli- 
cated by the fact that we find squarely in our path 
[73[ 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

that which Jesus never met, — our sins. These 
haunt, and taunt and daunt us, and slay for us 
the possibility of peace. Jesus does no sin; 
betrays no consciousness of evil in Himself; dis- 
tinguishes Himself by an unassailable holiness 
from the world He came to save. In this regard 
our experience reveals no counterpart to His. 
We sin; we are conscious of evil in our lives; 
and we find ourselves one with all men, in that 
all have sinned and come short of the glory of 
God. Any proposed scheme of human happiness 
therefore, must meet squarely and deal with, the 
problem of sin. For all unhappiness is born of 
sin — yours, or mine, or another's — and the 
continuance of unhappiness in the world is due 
to the failure to evict evil and enthrone goodness 
in the hearts of men. 

The word sin is now out of fashion, though as 
an act it has never lost its popularity. And while 
the word is not considered good form, various 
substitutes as " error," " defect," " disease" and 
" unfortunate effect of heredity and environment," 
are quite in the mode. Indeed, until we can get 
rid of a thing, a name for it is inevitable. And if, 
as the students of words tell us, the things of 
which we think most constantly, and have the 
most to do with, are the things to which we 
apply the greatest number of different names, 
then the abandonment of the simple incisive 
word of three letters, and the use of a great 
variety of longer words to express different shades 
of the same thought, may be taken as evidence 
of an omnipresent evil. 

[74] 



Enter Thou! 



It is not necessary to condemn human nature 
sweepingly, and without discrimination, in order 
to support our contention here. Let us acknowl- 
edge also the omnipresence of good, paint it in 
colors of glory, sing its beauty in anthems of 
unceasing praise. No man fares far on the path 
of life without finding the Father's incarnate 
goodness as friendliness, sympathy, loving-kind- 
ness among his fellows. But giving good its due 
will in no wise blot out the world's unspeakable 
evil. Paul, writing in the first century, has given 
us a picture of evil in the letter to the Romans, 
which sickens and staggers us, but when Im- 
manuel Kant, writing in the eighteenth, brings 
his great intellect to the same task, his picture 
is equally appalling. " That there must be such 
a corrupt propensity rooted in man," he says, 
" need not be formally proved in the face of the 
multitude of crying examples which experience 
sets before one's eyes in the acts of men. 

A passage from Professor Huxley, who as an 
agnostic cannot be suspected of any prejudice 
favorable to Christianity's view of sin, is in point. 
"It is," he says, " the secret of the superiority 
of the best theological teachers to the majority 
of their opponents that they substantially recog- 
nize these realities of things, however strange the 
forms in which they clothe their conceptions. 
The doctrines of predestination, of original sin, 
of the innate depravity of man and the evil fate 
of the greater part of the race, of the primacy of 
Satan in this world . . . faulty as they are, 
appear to me vastly nearer the truth than the 

[75] 



The Substance of Happiness 

1 liberal' popular illusions that babies are all 
born good, and that the example of a corrupt 
society is responsible for their failure to remain 
so; that it is given to everybody to reach the 
ethical ideal if he will only try." Robert Brown- 
ing in " Gold Hair" closes his strange story of a 
woman's dereliction with these lines: 

" Why I deliver this horrible verse? 
As the text of a sermon, which I now preach: 
Evil or good may be better or worse 
In the human heart, but the mixture of each 
Is a marvel and a curse. 

" The candid incline to surmise of late 
That the Christian faith proves false, I find; 
For our Essays-and-Reviews' debate 
Begins to tell on the public mind, 
And Colenso's words have weight: 

" I still, to suppose it true, for my part, 
See reasons and reasons; this to begin: 
'Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart 
At the head of a He — taught Original Sin, 
The Corruption of Man's Heart." 

Certainly the whole subject of sin, with its sure 
fatality for the soul's ruin, its defeat of the soul's 
high destiny, its destruction of the individual, 
and its consequent injury to society, is too large, 
and its facts too patent to admit, or require, 
a full discussion here. Let us only attempt to 
touch it in two or three of its phases, enough 
merely to re-convince ourselves of its universal 
presence and dread reality. 

First, the sins of the flesh — the swinish revel 
of the drunkard, the gorging of the glutton, the 
bestial wallowing of the libertine. These are the 

[76] 



Enter Thou! 



sins most unsparingly condemned by society, 
simply because they are the most obvious. With 
a rising tide of drink dragging myriads down to 
death; with the criminal wastefulness and ex- 
travagance of the idle rich continually in evidence ; 
with an organized traffic in vice linked to the 
political system of our cities, and destroying its 
thousands, what more natural than that all 
should join in unsparing condemnation of sensual 
sin? For to look into the depths of the heart of 
one dissolute man is to gaze upon the cosmic 
tragedy, and we draw back indignant that we, as 
members of the same race, are involved in the 
catastrophe. Yet our Lord, who read the hearts 
of all men perfectly, tells us that other sins, the 
sins of the spirit, are still more heinous. He could 
dismiss an erring woman with a command to 
sin no more, but He seared the souls of hypo- 
crites with the white heat of His wrath, 
while He told the Pharisees, 'The publicans 
and harlots go into the kindgom of heaven before 
you." 

And there is the third and final form of sin, in 
which, upon a fair reading of Scripture, it seems 
to have passed beyond forgiveness. When the 
Pharisees had denied that the miracle-working 
power of Jesus was divine, and had declared it to 
be diabolical, He said: "All manner of sin and 
blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the 
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be 
forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a 
word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven 
him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy 

[77] 



The Substance of Happiness 

Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this 
world, neither in the world to come." These are 
the words of Matthew. In Mark's account we 
read: " Verily I say unto you, all sins shall be 
forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies 
wherewithsoever they shall blaspheme: but he 
that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath 
never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal 
damnation." The meaning of the words must be 
this, at least: that a state — not an isolated act — 
of wilful, determined opposition and hatred to 
the will of God, in the face of full truth, consti- 
tutes such moral suicide, such killing of con- 
science, that the human spirit is permanently in- 
capacitated for desiring forgiveness and hence 
may never receive it. We may well be uncertain 
whether such a state is possible in this world. 
(Jesus did not say that the Pharisees had com- 
mitted such a sin, only that this was the sin to 
which they were verging perilously near.) But 
whoever reads the chapter on "Parnassians and 
Diabolists," in Nordau's "Degeneration," will be 
reminded irresistibly of these passages in the 
writings of Matthew and Mark. The possibility 
of an unforgivable sin will seem not too remote. 
For here are men who make evil their good, and 
good their evil; who are attracted only by badness, 
— murder, blood, lewdness and falsehood — who 
pray to Satan and aspire to hell. The high 
priest of this diabolism is Friedrich Wilhelm 
Nietzsche, whose aphorisms, lifted from the 
sewers of oblivion where they belong, are found 
today in beautiful booklets on the reading-tables 

[78] 



Enter Thou! 



of many who have not grasped the whole foul 
content of his philosophy. Upon this final mys- 
tery and eventuation of sin; at this point where it 
stands most perfectly revealed for what it is in 
essence; namely a dethroning of God, and an 
enthroning of self, we must allow the veil to fall. 
He who reads history and great literature, he who 
scans the stained tablets of his own heart, will 
find sin as practical and as much to be reckoned 
with as gravitation, of incredible deceptiveness 
and destructiveness, a constant in the equation 
of human woe, a black shadow of a blacker sub- 
stance co-extensive with the world's unhappiness. 
And before any man may enter into that calm- 
browed peace which Jesus knew, he must meet 
the profound and breathless problem which Jesus 
never knew. He must grapple with the sins of 
his soul and slay them, or be slain. 

And here the joy of our Lord becomes for us, 
not the joy which He experienced, but the joy 
which He bestows. Coming from the home in 
Nazareth He enters upon His public ministry in 
the effulgence of His Father's glory, in the very 
image of His substance, and thus, revealing in 
life, as later in death, the shining holiness of God, 
he convinces and convicts us of unholiness. When 
a few brief years had passed his enemies seized 
Him like a wild beast in Gethsemane, haled Him 
before priests and magistrates, mocked, scourged, 
spat upon Him, then led Him down the way of 
sorrow and killed Him on a cross. Dying there, 
He wrought a work of mystery, which was none 
the less a work of reparation for the wrong our 
[79] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 



sin has wrought against the holiness of God, and 
made possible our reconciliation with God. We 
cannot know all the mystery of Atonement. Jesus 
Himself must have found its full meaning dim- 
ming before His eyes when He said: "My God, my 
God, why hast thou forsaken me," but we know 
that the idea of Atonement meets the profound 
need of the heart, a need which it is impossible 
to meet otherwise. It is an idea found in the 
writings of the good and great, as when Isaiah says: 
"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our 
sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten 
of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for 
our transgressions, he was bruised for our in- 
iquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon 
him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we 
like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every 
one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him 
the iniquity of us all." Hermes says in "Prome- 
theus Bound," 

" Do not look 
For any end moreover to this curse, 
Or ere some God appear to accept thy pangs 
On his own head vicarious, and descend 
With unreluctant steps the darks of hell 
And gloomy abysses around Tartarus." 

Sophocles declares: 

" One soul working in the strength of love, 
Is mightier than ten thousand to atone." 

It is found in the inner constitution of society, 
for the family, with its mutual forbearance, its 

[80] 



Enter Thou! 



members suffering for each other, and often to 
propitiate a third, — as when a mother suffers for 
a son to shield him from a father's displeasure, — 
reveals the atoning principle. It is found in the 
constitution of the world about us. The flowers 
know the cross of vicarious sacrifice, and the leaves 
of autumn fade and fall that forests may be clad 
in the green gladness of the waiting spring. The 
hive knows it. The ceaseless toil of the bee is not 
for himself, but that it may impart to the species. 
Throughout the lower orders the individual is 
stripped that the community may be clothed. 
" Thoughtless people may dismiss these facts 
lightly," says one, " yet it is certainly significant 
to discover the law of sacrifice operative on the 
lower ranges of creation, to find the unit in all 
departments of nature deprived of liberty and life 
in the interests of the community of which it is a 
member. The deeper view of nature entertained 
by modern thinkers supplies a striking commen- 
tary on the profound passage which reveals the 
Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. 
The fanciful poetry of the past traced in the 
passion-flower the symbols of redemption — the 
cross, the crown of thorns, the spear, the nails; 
but in our day austere science declares the planet 
itself to be a passion-flower, and shows the sublime 
law of self-sacrifice working throughout its entire 
structure and development." 

The principle of vicarious sacrifice implicit in 
men and things is made perfect and explicit in 
the Godhood of Jesus, and all its faint foreshadow- 
ings in time are clarified for eternity in Him. The 
[81] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

Incarnation and the Atonement are living facts 
in eternal operation. Whether conceived and 
consummated in the mind of God, whether re- 
vealed to men on the august stage of history, or 
whether they are felt in miniature within the 
sphere of one's soul experience, the process is 
identical. And the creeds of Christendom are 
awesome not because they are unique, isolated 
and fanciful expressions of human opinion, but 
because in them, the grandest, the most universal, 
the most profoundly significant laws of God are 
made articulate. If we would take the first step 
toward lasting happiness, therefore, we must place 
ourselves by act of will, within the sphere of 
Christ's atoning work, and accept God's own 
perfect plan for our eternal joy. 

Now it may be presumed that we are all in 
practical accord with the preceding sermons of 
this course and with this sermon to this point. 
That we should agree perfectly in details is as 
unthinkable as it is undesirable, but we are prob- 
ably in practical agreement that the theory of 
happiness which has been advanced is a sound 
one. Yet happiness lingers. We do not enter 
into peace. Why? It is because we do not act 
on what we believe. We are depending upon the 
exercise of our own wills, when in reality, " His 
will is our peace." God waits to give all His 
children a peace that passeth understanding, yet 
even He cannot bestow that peace until our wills 
give place to His. 

In a certain sense, this means a " surrender of 
the will." If the anxious, the troubled, the fear- 

[82] 



Enter Thou! 



ful, the over-borne, are to find the peace that 
passeth understanding, this surrender is essential. 
When our desire for God's peace has reached a 
sufficient intensity, He will lead us into it if we 
simply leave off struggling, and abandon ourselves 
to Him. But the struggle must precede the 
abandonment if we are to attain. Man's ex- 
tremity is truly God's opportunity to give peace. 
There is a story often told by evangelists, of a 
man who, slipping on a precipice, grasped a 
branch and clung to it in desperation until ex- 
haustion forced him to let go, when he fell — just 
six inches! And there is another story of a man 
who went down the shaft of a deserted mine by 
means of a rope, who found himself at the rope's 
end dangling in the darkness. When almost in- 
sensible his hands slipped and he landed safely 
on a platform which he had been almost touching! 
There comes a time when in man's effort to find 
God he must become passive if he would prevail. 
It was when Jacob had ceased to wrestle with the 
angel at the fords of Jabbok, that the blessing 
came, and Jacob the Supplanter became Israel, 
a prince with God. 

But that which requires emphasis is not so 
much a surrender of the will, as a consecration of 
the will. We are to regard the will as the power 
within us which is most divine; the power by 
which we are able to imitate God most closely in 
His creative acts; the power by which we exercise 
the God-like gift of moral choice, refused to every 
other creature. We must reverence, enthrone, 
do homage to the will, and then, rightly proud 

[83] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

of being able to yield a power so divine, we must 
dedicate it to God's use. The enlisting soldier 
will not say: " I am too weak to march far, too 
timid to fight hard, too indifferent to wage a long 
campaign." He will say rather: " I am a man in 
the full power of manhood, fit to toil night and day 
on the march, to fight hard in the bloody trenches 
or on the open shot-raked field, and to yield my 
precious life if the cause demands. " Never must 
we belittle the will. We must magnify it while 
we still declare: 

" Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours, to make them thine." 

We must surrender the will by consecrating it, 
and that sense of " nothingness" which is an 
essential part of the experience of God's saints 
must not become the do-nothingness of spiritual 
slumber, or a false and deceptive humility. 

In the fifteenth of Luke are three parables. 
There is the parable of the lost coin, of the lost 
sheep and of the lost boy. The silver was lost 
because someone was careless. It had to be sought 
and found. The sheep was lost because it knew 
no better. It too, had to be sought and found. 
The boy was lost because he willed to be lost. 
He was lost by choice. He was a prodigal before 
he ever left home. Therefore he could not be 
found until he willed to be found. His father 
might have called the servants and searched until 
he found him, and he might have forced him home 
and forced the ring on his finger and the shoes 
on his feet and wrapped the purple robe around 

[84] 



Enter Thou! 



him, but he would have been a prodigal still. He 
could make no conditions with his father. He 
could not say: " Send my favorite servant, and 
my favorite horse, and urge me sufficiently, and 
perhaps I will come home." It was he who went 
away. It was he who must surrender his will to 
his father's will. Then, having returned and 
been welcomed, he must recognize his father's 
will as wiser than his own, and consecrate him- 
self to his father's purposes. " I will not live in 
rebellion, nor will I live in sloth. I will not spend 
the years in contemplation of thy love to me. But 
father, under thy good guidance, put me at work. 
Make me as one of thy hired servants." To con- 
secrate our wills! It is to say " I merge my man- 
hood in Godhood; I make loving-service my 
passion, virtue my delight, and before I will 
lapse back into the old idleness, the old failure, 
the old incompleteness, the old loneliness, the 
old disquiet, the old sin, I will die!" 

Why is it so difficult to yield the will to God? 
It is not hard for the flower to rise from its bed 
of snow and turn its face to spring's returning 
sky. It is not hard for the weary sun to rest in 
the silent west when day is spent. The dew 
forms on leaf and petal in the long quiet night 
without labor; and when the bird thrills love 
across the wood its soft-voiced mate makes 
answer ere the echoes fall away. But your will 
does not yield so to God's will. " The carnal mind 
is enmity against God," and every short and 
easy theory of religion, and every contemptuous 
dismissal of religion's deeper problems, and every 

[85] 



The Substance of Happiness 

attempt to substitute some little self-made pro- 
gram for the great program of God, sooner or 
later falls foul of this fact. "For the good that I 
would I do not: but the evil which I would not, 
that I do/ ' says Paul, and he states a human 
experience that is universal and profound. We 
are blinded, unnerved, enmeshed, by the sin 
whose very ugliness should drive us to the ineff- 
able beauty of the holiness of God. 

And just because it is hard for us to yield our 
wills God makes His dealing with us one long, 
unceasing appeal to that end. He appeals to the 
intellect — to the knowing, judging, reasoning 
faculty which He has given us. As we behold 
His heavens, the work of His ringers, the moon 
and the stars which He has ordained, His moun- 
tains, misty-topped, and His unfathomed seas, 
our minds begin a journey which may well end 
in Him. For as we attempt to explain a world 
which without Him is inexplicable, we are brought 
back to His own words: " In the beginning God 
created the heaven and the earth." " In the 
beginning was the Word and ... all things 
were made by Him, and without Him was not 
anything made that was made." He appeals 
to the intellect again in that Christ who was the 
Truth, and able to answer every question of the 
soul. But after all, the appeal to the intellect is 
an appeal through the intellect to the will. Again, 
He appeals to the heart as He leads us through 
doubt and pain and disaster to see that naught 
save Himself can satisfy; and again as He shows 
us through high experience, that He is all suffi- 

[86] 



Enter Thou! 

cient. But the appeal to the heart is an appeal 
through the heart to the will. Again, He appeals 
to the conscience. He writes on the heart's tables 
that sin is deformity and ugliness, while He urges 
us to choose the beautiful and true. He appeals 
to conscience through His written laws and His 
startling providences, as when Belshazzar's mes- 
sage flamed in blazing letters on the walls of 
blasphemy and shame, or as when tortured Herod 
saw John the Baptist risen from the dead. But 
all this is an appeal through the conscience to the 
will. He appeals to the memory, as when the 
vision of youth's godly influences steals upon 
ungodly manhood. It was the memory of home 
that brought the prodigal to himself at last. 
Many a mother's thoughts have lifted heaven- 
ward as she holds a tiny shoe long buried in the 
bureau drawer, drawn forth, by chance or design 
to recall the wee warm foot that wore it once. 
But all this is God's appeal through the memory 
to the will. Again, He appeals to the imagina- 
tion through the great, the rare, the beautiful, 
in literature, in music, in all art, and through the 
heaven of John's apocalypse to which He woos 
the weary and the heavy-laden; in the incar- 
nation of Himself in Jesus Christ ; in the declara- 
tion of His eternal power and Godhead. But 
this appeal to the imagination is in reality an 
appeal through the imagination to the will. He 
appeals on every page of Scripture to our self- 
interest, teaching us the blessing of abiding in 
His will, warning us that wilfulness can bring no 
harvest save of tears, and this appeal with all 

[87] 



The Substance of Happiness 

the others converges in one great appeal upon the 
will. He pleads with us on the ground of our 
divine birth-right, for we were created in God's 
image to hold fellowship with Him, and He gives 
the great Redemption to buy us back that this 
fellowship may neither be lost to the Father nor 
to His children. The outstretched arms upon the 
Cross are the symbol of His great welcome to us 
all. He sent His apostles, God-intoxicated men, 
to fill the earth with the Gospel of gladness, and 
these have braved the highways and the jungles, 
and stormed the proud cities, — falling often, 
but never in defeat, for falling forward always, 
they have strained the colors toward the goal. 
He appeals to us on the ground of our responsi- 
bility, saying plainly " Everyone of us must give 
account of himself unto God." He appeals to us 
on the basis of our welfare, for no soul can fare 
well save through the doing of God's will. And 
He closes the long story of His dealing with man- 
kind through the ages; He closes the Book which 
has itself been centuries in making, with one 
last thrilling love-appeal " And the Spirit and the 
bride say, Come. And let him that is athirst 
come. And whosoever will, let him take the 
water of life freely." Every appeal focuses at 
last upon one question: " Are you willing to be 
mine?" This is the first and supreme question 
for your happiness. How will you answer it? 
On your answer hangs the momentous issue, 
whether or not you shall go forward into His 
deep secrets of life and death; whether or not 
you shall finally rejoice with joy unspeakable 

[88] 



Enter Thou! 

and full of glory; whether or not you shall fling 
off the fetters of a joyless selfishness, and take 
the first upward, onward step toward pleasures 
which are for evermore. 



[89] 



VI 

(f) THE FULLER ENTRANCE 



[91] 



" I knew a man . . . caught up into paradise, and 
heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a 
man to utter. 2 Corinthians 12: 2-4. 



[92] 



VI 



THE FULLER ENTRANCE 

THERE are many Christians, and some saints. 
All saints maybe Christians, but all Christians 
are not saints. A Christian is one who believes on 
the Lord Jesus Christ. A Christian saint is one 
who, through that belief, attains union with God in 
a high degree. Living as we do, in an age when 
the saintly life is none too common, let us remind 
ourselves of its characteristics by some quota- 
tions. Let us catch once more, if we may, some- 
thing of its unique tone. I take all these extracts, 
abridging them slightly, from " The Varieties of 
Religious Experience, " by William James. 
Mrs. Jonathan Edwards says : 

" When I arose on the morning of the Sabbath, I felt a love to 
all mankind, wholly peculiar in its strength and sweetness, far 
beyond all that I had ever felt before. The power of that love 
seemed inexpressible. I thought, if I were surrounded by enemies, 
who were venting their cruelty and malice upon me, in tormenting 
me, it would still be impossible that I should cherish any feel- 
ings toward them but those of love, and pity, and ardent desires 
for their happiness. I never felt so far from a disposition to 
judge and censure others as I did that morning. I realized also, 
in an unusual and very lively manner how great a part of Chris- 
tianity lies in the performance of our social and relative duties 
to one another. The same joyful sense continued throughout the 
day — a sweet love to God and all mankind." 

[93] 



The Substance of Happiness 



Blanche Gamond, a humble peasant girl per- 
secuted as a Huguenot under Louis XIV. des- 
cribes her great experience thus: 

" They shut all the doors, and I saw six women, each with a 
bunch of willow rods as thick as the hand could hold, and a yard 
long. He gave me the order, ' Undress yourself,' which I did 
. . . being naked from the waist up. They brought a cord 
with which they tied me to a beam in the kitchen. They drew 
the cord tight with all their strength and asked me ' Does it 
hurt you?' and then they discharged their fury upon me, ex- 
claiming as they struck me, ' Pray now to your God!' But at 
this moment I received the greatest consolation I can ever receive 
in my life, since I had the honor of being whipped for the name 
of Christ. ... In vain the women cried ' We must double 
our blows; she does not feel them, for she neither speaks nor 
cries.' And how should I have cried, since I was swooning with 
happiness within?" 

James Russell Lowell has given in his letters 
the account of an experience which Mr. James 
also quotes. 

" I had a revelation last Friday evening. I was at Mary's 
and happened to say something of the presence of spirits (of 
whom, I said, I was often dimly aware), Mr, Putnam entered 
into an argument with me on spiritual matters. As I was speak- 
ing, the whole system rose up before me like a vague destiny 
looming from the Abyss. I never before felt so clearly the 
Spirit of God in me and around me. The whole room seemed to 
me full of God. The air seemed to waver to and fro with the 
presence of Something I knew not what. I spoke with the calm- 
ness and clearness of a prophet. I cannot tell you what this 
revelation was. I have not yet studied it enough. But I shall 
perfect it one day, and then you shall hear it and acknowledge 
its grandeur." 

Frank Bullen, sailor before the mast, gives the 
following in his remarkable book, "With Christ 
at Sea." 

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The Fuller Entrance 



" It was blowing stiffly, and we were carrying a press of can- 
vas to get north out of the bad weather. Shortly after four bells 
we hauled down the flying- jib, and I sprang out astride the 
boom to furl it. I was sitting astride the boom when suddenly 
it gave way with me. The sail slipped through my fingers, and 
I fell backwards, hanging head downwards over the seething 
tumult of shining foam under the ship's bow, suspended by one 
foot. But I felt only high exultation in my certainty of eternal 
life. Although death was divided from me by a hair's breadth, 
and I was acutely conscious of the fact, it gave me no sensation 
but joy. I suppose I could have hung there no longer than five 
seconds, but in that time I lived a whole age of delight. But 
my body asserted itself, and with a desperate gymnastic effort 
I regained the boom. How I furled the sail I don't know, but I 
sang at the utmost pitch of my voice praises to God that went 
pealing out over the dark waste of waters." 

And now let us listen to Mr. J. Trevor, who 
bared his inner life in an autobiography entitled 
" My Quest for God." 

" One brilliant Sunday morning my wife and boys went to 
the Unitarian chapel in Macclesfield. I felt it impossible to 
accompany them — as though to leave the sunshine on the hills 
and go down there to the chapel, would be for the time an act 
of spiritual suicide. So, very reluctantly and sadly, I left my 
wife and boys to go down into the town, while I went farther 
up into the hills with my stick and dog, In the loveliness of 
the morning, and the beauty of the hills and valleys, I soon lost 
my sense of sadness and regret. For nearly an hour I walked 
along the road, and then returned. On the way back, suddenly, 
without warning, I felt that I was in Heaven, — an inward 
state of peace and joy and assurance indescribably intense, 
accompanied with a sense of being bathed in a warm glow of 
light, as though the external condition had brought about 
the internal effect, a feeling of having passed beyond the body, 
though the scene around me stood out more clearly and as if 
nearer to me than before, by reason of the illumination in which 
I seemed to be placed. This deep emotion lasted, though with 
decreasing strength, until I reached home, and for some time 
after, only gradually passing away." After further experiences 
of the same kind he says of them " I have severely questioned 
the worth of these moments. To no soul have I named them, 
lest I should be thought to be building my life and work upon 
mere phantasies of the brain. But I find that, after every ques- 

[95] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

Honing and test, they stand out today as the most real experiences 
of my life, and experiences which have explained and justified 
and unified all past experiences and all past growth. . . . and 
I was aware that I was immersed in the infinite ocean of God." 

We are reminded as we listen to these modern 
instances, of Paul's great experience recorded in 
the twelfth of second Corinthians, which is not 
dissimilar: "I knew a man in Christ above four- 
teen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot 
tell : or whether out of the body, I cannot tell : 
God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the 
third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether 
in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: 
God knoweth:) how that he was caught up into 
paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which 
it is not lawful for a man to utter/ ' 

I have italicized the closing words in the extract 
from Mr. Trevor's book, because they are of 
much importance in summarizing, to an extent, 
the content of mystical experiences, instances of 
which might be adduced without number. As 
we study them we are invariably led to certain 
conclusions concerning the saintly life. 

There is but a thin screen separating the finite 
from the infinite. 

" But if I could see as in truth they be 
The glories that encircle me, 
I should lightly hold this tissued fold 
With its marvellous curtain of blue and gold, 

" For soon the whole, like a parched scroll 
Shall before my amazed eyes unroll, 
And without a screen, at one burst be seen 
The Presence in which I have always been." 

[96] 



The Fuller Entrance 



Thus the poet. But the consciousness of being in 
the presence of the Infinite has been granted to 
some before the heavens are rolled together as 
a scroll, and before death's great revelation. 
There have been brief, rare moments in which 
they have pierced the screen. At such times 
they have received truth directly, intuitively, 
without any conscious or common process of 
thought. There has come into play a spiritual 
cognizance which defies analysis, and may well 
be called a capacity of the soul distinct from any 
capacity of the mind. The poets have given us 
more accurate descriptions in this field than is 
possible to prose. Wordsworth, for example, 
tells of a mood: 

" In which the affections gently lead us on, — 
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame, 
And even the motion of our human blood 
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
In body, and become a living soul : 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We see into the life of things." 

Tennyson in the " Ancient Sage," which is an 
account of his personal experience, declares: 

" For more than once when I 
Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
The word that is the symbol of myself, 
The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, 
And passed into the Nameless as a cloud 
Melts into heaven. I touched my limbs, the limbs 
Were strange, not mine — and yet no shade of doubt, 
But utter clearness, and the loss of Self, 
The gain of such large life as matched with ours 
Were Sun to spark — unshadowable in words, 
Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world." 

[97] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

These moments, fleeting as they are, determine 
the quality of the saintly life. They give it that 
which we can only describe as a unique oneness 
with Deity. " I find," to refer again to Trevor's 
closing words, " I find, that, after every ques- 
tioning and test, they stand out today as the most 
real experiences of my life, and experiences which 
have explained, and justified, and unified all 
past experiences and all past growth." 

And now let us raise the very pertinent ques- 
tion, " Is it desirable to be a saint? " Our answer 
will depend, of course, upon our conception of 
saintliness. If the question refers to ascetic 
saints, most of us will say " No." If, on the other 
hand, it refers to practical saints, that is quite a 
different matter. In the light of history there is 
no reason to question the practicality of the 
saint. No doubt he often appears passive, pas- 
sionless, unassertive, but it may be only because 
no occasion has arisen to reveal his possibilities. 
Let the occasion arise and your saint becomes a 
superman, flashing out in dazzling fashion an 
emotion and mastery little less than sublime. 
Ignatius was a mystic; he was also a human 
dynamo. When Bernard came to the vale of 
Clairvaux, "Brightdale," it was not called Clair- 
vaux, but Wormwood, because it was infested by 
fierce banditti. It was Bernard who trans- 
formed it, changed its name, and built its famous 
abbey to shield from danger, not the souls of men 
only, but their bodies. Later, this same ghostly 
mystic ruled all Europe from his cell, uttering 
words which in great crises were the turning 

[98] 



The Fuller Entr ance 

points of history. Lord Roseberry calls Oliver 
Cromwell a " practical mystic. " " His mys- 
ticism was the safeguard of his logic, and his 
intense practicality was the safeguard of his 
mysticism." The men who kindled the Reforma- 
tion were saints and mystics. When the Black 
Death struck Strasburg and men fled like fright- 
ened sheep, Tauler stayed to comfort the sick, 
the terror-stricken and the dying. Luther, the 
mystic, was a miracle of homely toil. The life 
of William Law knew no rest from its labors of 
love. Stephen, the first choice of the young 
church at Jerusalem for the most prosaic, prac- 
tical charity-work is soon seen as a mystic of 
mystics, preaching with fervent power, denounc- 
ing the Jews as betrayers and murderers, and 
dying the martyr's death while all who beheld 
him saw his face as it had been the face of an 
angel. For a perfect example of the practical 
saint we need only turn to Paul's first letter to the 
Corinthians. Read the last part of the fifteenth 
chapter, and the beginning of the sixteenth, and 
remember that the breaking into chapters is no 
part of Paul's plan. " Behold, I shew you a 
mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all 
be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall 
sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, 
and we shall be changed. For this corruptible 
must put on incorruption, and this mortal must 
put on immortality, . . . then shall be 
brought to pass the saying that is written, Death 
is swallowed up in victory. . . . Wherefore, 

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The Substance of Happiness 

my beloved brethren, be ye always 

abounding in the work of the Lord. . . . Now 
concerning the collection for the saints I . . . "If 
you believe/' he says in effect, " in the mighty 
doctrines which I have just proclaimed, give 
your faith feet for the common ways of men, 
hands for their help, and a heart to love them 
with." To absorb God's power as we sit down 
with Him upon the heights; to radiate that 
power at the mountain's foot, — this is God's 
program for His saints. 

" There are in this loud stunning tide 
Of human care and crime, 
With whom the melodies abide 

Of the everlasting chime; 
Who carry music in their heart 
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart; 
Plying their task with busier feet, 
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat." 

We may even go a step farther and say that 
not only is saintliness compatible with practical 
Christianity, but that there is no high degree of 
practicality without it. If there is slight danger of 
our being too saintly, there is a huge danger of 
our being too worldly. There is, I think, a certain 
pathos in those numerous magazine articles in 
which it is proposed to rectify the church and re- 
store it to what is presumed to be its former 
power, for they are so often written by men, who 
are whirled and bewildered in the maelstrom of 
contemporary life to such an extent that they 
cannot understand why the church is not whirling 
too. " Let us unite our denominations," say 
[100] 



The Fuller Entrance 



these men. "Let us put the whole business of 
religion upon an economic basis. Let us reach 
out and hold all the great institutions for human 
amelioration and relief as our own. Let us be 
up-to-date, and show the world that we are awake 
and abreast of things as they are." 

In all this there is, of course, a certain value, 
but it is so small, compared with the values left 
undisclosed, as to be distinctly disappointing. 
For the world, in its heart, asks the church to 
show it nothing — save another world! It is not 
the way of the street we need to know, but the 
way of Heaven. It is not the manner of the 
smart editorial which we need to catch for our 
pulpits, but the voice of the Son of God. It is 
not the things of today which are to be our chief 
concern at all, but the things of eternity. It is 
not the problem of making this world delightful 
which must engross us, but the problem of making 
the next world real. Imitate the world, and thus 
flatter it as you will. You may hold its languid 
interest for a moment, but in its heart-break, 
its loneliness and sin it will seek some cloistered 
quiet, some priest who walks serenely among 
the unseen things, and your sounding machinery, 
your smart organization, your whole scheme of 
up-to-dateness will have no message for the soul. 
Let the business of the church be raised to the 
highest efficiency; let us do all that men may do 
through modern methods of organization; let 
us march shoulder to shoulder in the war for 
social betterment, slaying disease and poverty, 
rescuing the woman overborne, and the child 
[101] 



The Substance of Happiness 

on Mammon's altar, but let us not fail to pro- 
claim that which alone can give our campaign 
validity and success, the eternal Fatherhood of 
God, revealed in Jesus Christ. Our spiritual 
task and our social task are inseparable, but the 
last is no substitute for the first, and unless the 
spiritual message rings clear upon the world, 
the world dies. Let us fulfill the social obliga- 
tion as perfectly, as efficiently as we may, and let 
us still remember that if we have done only this, 
we have done but little of that which Christ's 
church exists to do. This is not coming close to 
our work in the world. It is only a cc^nf using of 
the issue. For we are never so near that world 
and to that work as in those ineffable hours when 
God and the soul and the soul's sin seem the 
only realities; when the unseen is the significant 
and abiding; and when, through a moment's rapt 
union with the Infinite we gain our only adequate 
power and our only adequate motive for the finite 
task. 

If, then, the saintly life is desirable, how shall 
it be attained? It is interesting to remember 
that this is no new problem. An innumerable 
multitude have sought its solution. From time 
immemorial the Brahman has striven through 
his practice of yoga for union with the Infinite. 
By self-control, keeping prescribed observances, 
remaining in certain bodily postures, regulation 
of breathing, diversion of the senses from the 
objects of sense, attainment of self-composure, 
meditation, and profound contemplation, it is 
possible, he believes, so to ally himself with the 
[102] 



The Fuller Entrance 



supernatural that he may work miracles at will. 
Through concentration of thought he reaches 
that " knowledge of the absolute difference of 
spirit from matter " " which is equivalent to 
salvation." The mystics of Islam have developed 
a many-sided system. They strive to purge the 
heart of all that is not God, and through prayer 
and meditation seek visions of angels and proph- 
ets whose instruction they receive. And still 
beyond this they reach those transports and ec- 
stasies which no words may describe. Philo, a 
Jew of the first century, teaches that God in His 
inmost nature is inaccessible, as Moses learned 
when God declared: " Thou shalt see what is 
behind me, but my face shall not be seen." Men 
are to contemplate Him in silence. All our 
knowledge of God is through the God who dwells 
within us, though the contemplation of God's 
laws in nature may accomplish much in the 
elevation of the soul. 

In Christian mysticism the saint moves toward 
the likeness of God through the three stages of 
the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive 
life. These stages, and the means of attaining 
perfection in each vary, but from the early dawn 
of Christianity the same mystic way has been 
worn smooth by countless feet. Plotinus, in 
the third century, bade men rise from the vision of 
this world, itself " a beautiful image of the 
Divine," to the love of the Good, and so on until 
the body no longer disturbs our contemplation, 
and our souls unite with the universal soul as 
they " sink into a deep silence, and all around the 
[103] 



The Substance of Happiness 

tumult of the senses grows still." In the fourth 
century Augustine arranged the soul's ascent in 
seven stages, the higher steps being still purifi- 
cation, illumination and union. He puts into one 
sentence much that is fundamental to mysticism 
when he says: " I tremble and I burn; I tremble 
feeling that I am unlike Him; I burn, feeling 
that I am like Him." 

Simeon, who in the tenth century, described his 
experiences with such power as to win for himself 
the title of " New Theologian," found that in 
moments of sufficient spiritual elevation, divinity 
appeared in the form of a supernatural light, and 
the vision of the light became for him the goal of 
all religious aspiration. Ruysbroek, of the four- 
teenth century, a disciple of the great Meister 
Eckhart, places in his " ladder of love," seven 
rounds: good- will, chastity, voluntary poverty, 
humility, desire for God's glory, contemplation, 
and " the ineffable, unnameable transcendence 
of all knowledge and thought." Tauler, in the 
same period, taught that separation from God 
is the source of all misery. It is the pain of hell. 
To practice self-control until all our lower powers 
are governed by our highest reason ; to lie passive 
like St. John on the loving breast of Jesus; to 
merge our joys and griefs into a sympathy with 
Christ, — this is to attain perfect union with the 
Father. In the seventeenth century, George Fox, 
now dreaming, now agonizing over spiritual 
things in the orchards and fields of England, came 
forth at last " Valiant in asserting the truth, 
bold in defending it, patient in suffering for it, 
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The Fuller Entrance 

immovable as a rock/' to found the Society of 
Friends whose distinctive dogma is the imme- 
diate influence of the Holy Spirit, and its expec- 
tation of His constant guidance ; and whose public 
worship, held often in utter silence, is a direct 
communion of the soul with its Maker in rapt 
devotion, in humble, fervent petition for cleansing 
from secret faults, and in thanksgiving for the 
Divine goodness. 

Wordsworth, for the nineteenth century, gathers 
into himself much of the mysticism of the past, 
though his system has points of originality, and 
his expression of it is incomparable. He incul- 
cates a strenuous aspiration for infinitude as the 
heart's home. Natural objects are to remind 
us of that Whole of which they are a part, but 
not to lift us to vague and visionary cloud-lands. 
God's voice breathes not from nature alone, nor 
from the soul alone, but from the contact of nature 
and the soul. In his own experience, Wordsworth 
passed from a sense of the Infinite to a sense that 
the Infinite is the only home in which the soul 
may rest. Then, " sinking into self from thought 
to thought," he came at last to " breathe in worlds 
to which the heaven of heavens is but a veil," 
to see " the forms whose kingdom is where space 
and time are not," and to yield himself to a state 
of ecstasy. Concerning those who experience 
this ecstasy he says : 

" The highest bliss 
The flesh can know is theirs — the consciousness 
Of whom they are, habitually infused 
Through every image and through every thought, 
And all affections by communion raised 
From earth to heaven, from human to divine." 

[105] 



The Substance of Happiness 

Following mysticism in its quiet progress 
through the ages we see how slight are its funda- 
mental variations. It is forever true to its first 
principles. In all its forms it moves forward to 
one goal, the union of the soul with God. Always 
its method is the same; through purity into Deity. 
" The pure in heart shall see God." " Follow 
holiness, without which no man shall see the 
Lord." " Who shall ascend into the hill of the 
Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place? 
He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who 
hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn 
deceitfully." 

How shall we attain to holiness? Let us beware, 
first of all, of the too common error of mysticism 
which, in reducing sainthood to its simplest 
terms, strives for a communion with God from 
which the Bible, the church, even the Lord Jesus 
Himself, with His life and death, is eliminated as 
unnecessary. Our safety here lies in following 
Paul. Mystic of mystics though he was he 
never sought to rise above Christ to the con- 
templation of the Absolute. His contemplation 
of the Absolute was through Christ; it was 
possible only through Him; nay, Christ was 
for him the Absolute. 

If others insist on self-knowledge as the way 
to God, Paul insists on Christ-knowledge, and 
his writings are full of allusions which show how 
impossible for him would be the perception of the 
Divine apart from Christ. " I am crucified with 
Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ 
liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the 
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The Fuller Entrance 



flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who 
loved me and gave himself for me." 

How shall we attain that union with God 
which is the goal of the saint? 

First, let us go again to the Gospels and read 
them. From the most-sold, least-read Book in 
the world, let us learn who and what this God 
may be with whom we would effect a union. 
Other portraits there are, but none that can 
compare with this. 

Second, let us by deliberate act of will, accept 
the Christ of these Gospels as Teacher, Master 
and Saviour. 

Third, let us make that surrender of the will 
which is a daily dying unto all sensuousness and 
selfishness, and a daily living unto issues that 
are Divine. 

Fourth, let us make time for that communion 
with God possible only through meditation and 
prayer. 

Fifth, let us begin some specific effort, however 
small, on behalf of others, uniting a complete 
surrender of the will to God, with a complete 
consecration of it to His work, while we make 
our own the prayer of Rabbi Gamaliel: " O 
Lord, grant that I may do Thy will as if it were 
my will, that Thou mayest do my will as if it were 
Thy will." 

And shall we all come thus to high and breath- 
less experience? Of this much we may be sure: 
we shall come safely by this path through that 
weariness and shallowness and materialism of 
modern life which steals away the most precious 
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The Substance of Happiness 



treasures of the soul. We shall attain that nearness 
to God without which real life is impossible. 
" This is life eternal, to know — to know the only 
true God, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent." 
We shall see Him as He is, and we shall grow like 
Him, for intercourse with God, direct, individual, 
alone, is the last secret of heart-purity, and the 
deep source of our divinest possibility. Your 
living is not your life. God is your life. Find 
Him, abide in Him, grow like Him, and you shall 
fulfill your destiny; you shall wield that influence 
possible only to the God-satisfied; you shall come 
to the peace that passeth all understanding. 
And it may be that you shall come even as the 
saints of old unto raptures impossible to tell, 
for that there is no speech nor language whereby 
to utter them! 



[108] 



VII 

(g) THE ENTRANCE PERFECTED 



[109] 



" In my Father's house are many mansions: if it 
were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare 
a place for you." — John 14: 2. 

" We are . . . willing rather to be absent from the 
body, and to be at home with the Lord." 

— II Corinthians 5: 8 RV. 



[HO] 



VII 



THE ENTRANCE PERFECTED 

IN the last sermon we found happiness at its high- 
est and purest in the mystical rapture of the 
saints. But these experiences are rare and brief. 
Moreover, they seem possible only for the few. 
Is it possible for the many to know them per- 
fectly and permanently? If earth were all, we 
should be compelled to answer no. Heaven 
enables us to answer yes. 

Heaven, as the theme of a sermon, is now 
rarely met with. As a subject for funeral dis- 
courses, it long survived, but now the funeral 
discourse itself is seldom heard. The preacher 
who will pass in review his preaching for the last 
decade or two, is surprised to find how seldom he 
has spoken at length of the new Jerusalem. A 
glance at the published pulpit addresses of the 
past twenty-five years shows that sermons on 
heaven are almost as rare as sermons on hell. 

Two reasons immediately come to mind. First, 
there is the abundant material prosperity of 
Christendom. Heaven is preached when earth 
is uncomfortable. Thus, the thought of Heaven 
was much in the mind of the early church. It 
is the poverty and persecution at Ephesus, 
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The Substance of Happiness 

Smyrna, and Pergamos that gives point to the 
promises of the glorified Christ: " Thou hast 
borne, and hast patience, and hast not fainted." 
. . . . "To him that overcometh will I give 
to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of 
the paradise of God." " I know thy tribulation 
and poverty — He that overcometh shall not be 
hurt of the second death." " Thou hast not 
denied my faith, even in those days wherein 
Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain 
among you." . . . "To him that overcometh 
will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and I 
will give him a white stone, and in the stone a 
new name written, which no man knoweth save 
he that receiveth it." The sorrow songs of the 
negro, compound of thunder, wailing and tears, 
and throbbing always with the Heavenly hope, 
have had no additions since emancipation. In 
times of prosperity we " Take the cash, and let 
the credit go." 

Another reason has been the attitude of science 
toward the supernatural. We are only just 
emerged from a period when doubt of the existence 
of the unseen was everywhere the prevailing note. 
Now science itself is mystical. Behind the ulti- 
mate revelation of the laboratory, lies the ulti- 
mate mystery of things. Today we extol the 
scientific spirit, but even science itself finds its 
old method inadequate to reveal the profounder 
meaning and significance of life. The hostility 
of science to the things of the spirit is dead; 
rather does it confirm the ancient faith that man 
is a spirit, living not by bread alone, but by 
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The Entrance Perfected 

impalpable elements mysteriously radiant, sacred 
and exalted. Fleshly literature finds decreasing 
vogue among those who think. The art of the 
flesh for the sake of the flesh-pots is seen as 
transient and untrue; and any effort of literature, 
art or science which ignores the soul fails of high 
success. Verily, " The moon is rising again and 
the tide of dreams floods once more the naked 
shingles of the world." So that in the future 
it may well be that the invisible Heaven shall be 
preached, often and fervently, as of old; and may 
make again, as in the past, a large contribu- 
tion to a spiritual interpretation of life. " I 
see no kite," said a man to a boy who sat on a 
hill-side holding a string, after nightfall. " Xor 
I," was the reply. " But I feel it pull." 

In any consideration of Heaven certain ques- 
tions immediately arise. First, is Heaven a 
place? This is one of those queries whose origin 
is difficult to understand. If Heaven is, why 
should it be thought of otherwise than as a place? 
Four thousand years before Christ Egyptian 
scholars believed in an abode of the departed, and 
this belief was wide spread fifteen hundred or a 
thousand years before Christ. The Homeric 
hades was a world unseen, but real, into which 
men pass at death. The ancient Babylonians 
had the tradition of a " land of no return." 
Plato, three hundred and forty-seven years before 
Christ, elaborated his immortal argument for 
immortality in which he declares that those who 
have purified their lives will live with the gods 
in places that are bright and beautiful beyond 
[113] 



P The Sub stance of Happiness 

description. Reading the Gospel story of our 
Lord's ascension it is difficult to doubt that 
Heaven is a definite portion of space. And while 
the word Heaven is sometimes used to express 
a state of mind, or a quality of character, yet 
Christ's declarations will be conclusive for all 
believers: "I go to prepare a place for you, and 
if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come 
again, and receive you unto myself; that where 
I am, there ye may be also." 

The question which the Corinthians put to 
Paul is also a constantly recurring one: " How 
are the dead raised up and with what body do 
they come?" This is a question, evidently, 
which cannot be completely answered, but Paul 
replies with considerable definiteness. It is 
sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. 
That is, it is not merely destined to eternal 
preservation, but is insusceptible to dissolution. 
It is sown in dishonor, it shall be raised in glory. 
When we think of our Lord's face transfigured 
on the mount, shining as the sun; and when we 
remember that at His second coming the heavens 
and the earth shall flee away at the sight of His 
glory; and when we remember the promise that 
as we have borne the image of the earthly, so 
shall we bear the image of the heavenly, we can 
begin to understand why Paul told his converts 
not to mourn for those whom one day they should 
see again, bearing a beauty and blessedness which 
no words might describe. Further, we are told 
that the present body, sown in weakness shall 
be raised in power. Well do we know our earthly 
[114] 



The Entrance Perfected 

weaknesses and limitations, but each, to the 
believer, is only a prophecy of the perfecting 
and strengthening which waits beyond the grave. 
The eye sweeps a narrow range here. There it 
shall sweep continents and stars. We walk here. 
There we shall fly with the speed of light. New 
senses, new capacities, new organs for the appre- 
hension of beauty and knowledge, new powers of 
body, mind and soul — these and nothing less, 
but rather more, are the legitimate expectation 
of those who have here no continuing city, and 
declare plainly that they seek one that hath 
foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 
For " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
have entered into the heart of man, the things 
which God hath prepared for them that love him." 

The story of Helen Keller illustrates the possi- 
bilities of the future life. Deaf, dumb, and blind, 
she lived, entombed in the flesh, for years. She 
could speak no thought nor could another tell 
his thought to her. Music swelled, she heard it 
not. Flowers bloomed and sunsets flamed in 
glory, she saw them not. She ate, and slept, and 
woke again, while the world of mind and soul, 
for her, were not. Then came that man of divin- 
est patience who, putting his fingers on her throat, 
and hers on his, spelled out the names of the 
common objects — the orange, the water, the 
sun, the summer, and the storm. When she fell 
and hurt herself he spelled " I love you," and 
quickly she spelled the answer, " And I love you." 
Afterward Helen Keller passed into the charge 
of a woman who with the same patience, continued 
[115] 



The S ub stance of Happiness 



to develop that awakened mind. She explained 
the deadened auditory nerve; told her pupil that 
the silence was now loud with marching soldiers, 
and now awesome with the music of the chorus 
and the orchestra; led her to the galleries and 
spoke to her of pictured faces and landscapes; 
told her the fairy tale of colors. At other times 
she was told of faces lit with smiles or dimmed 
by tears, until at last she came forth from her 
grave of flesh to find that the world had not been 
formless and void — but she had been blind! 
The music had not been wanting — she had 
been deaf! A universe of the mind and spirit 
had not been non-existent — only she had lacked 
capacity to receive it, enveloped as she was in 
darkness and silence infinite. She had touched 
her world only through her finger-tips or the 
breeze which fanned her cheek, and then, through 
powers of which it had been impossible for her to 
faintly conceive, her horizons swung back and 
back, until she faced a thousand worlds, all new. 
Why should it be thought a thing incredible, that, 
in the day when this mortal shall put on im- 
mortality, we shall come with consciousness so 
irradiated, with all the old norms of sense so out- 
worn and outgrown that in a new perception of 
the universe we shall catch the music of all its 
spheres, feel the effulgence of all its suns, discern 
its inmost processes, and learn the meaning of 
all its history and all its destiny? 

But there is one question more vital than any 
speculation concerning the glory that is to be 
revealed, — a question which always comes 
[116] 



The Entrance Perfected 



straight from the heart. Shall we recognize our 
loved ones there? Certainly there is not one word 
in Scripture which will make us doubt that 
recognition, while on the other hand, there is 
much positive assurance. It is promised that 
our cup of happiness shall be full, and it could 
not be full unless heaven means reunion with our 
beloved. It is inconceivable that man's social 
affections will be annihilated by death, for that 
would involve the destruction of personality. 
Nor can it be supposed that God, the God of 
infinite love, could have put this pure yearning 
in men's hearts, only to deny it satisfaction at 
the last. Everywhere we are led to infer that we 
shall retain all our faculties in the future life, and 
surely one of the most important of these is mem- 
ory. Were it otherwise, there could be no mighty 
paean of redemption sung in Heaven, no glorying 
in God's goodness in the ages past. The doctrine 
that we shall know those in Heaven whom we 
loved on earth is inseparable from the very idea 
of Heaven. Amid the rain and falling leaves of 
the autumn following Mrs. Browning's death, 
Robert Browning voiced his conviction of certain 
reunion with his 

" Lyric love, half angel and half bird " 

who had gone before, declaring that upon enter- 
ing Heaven he should find 

" first a peace out of pain, 
Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 
And with God be the rest! " 

[117] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 



The Bible does not elaborate the truth here, 
simply because it is taken for granted. The 
patriarchs " are gathered to their fathers " when 
they die. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians not to 
sorrow as those hopeless ones who know no resur- 
rection-truth, for they shall yet be reunited with 
all who die in faith. 

Of the other questions which press for answer 
we shall have space to consider only one. What 
constitutes the happiness of Heaven? 

There will be no sin there, and all the pain and 
misery which inevitably follow sin will be wanting. 
There will be no night there, which is, perhaps, 
John's way of saying that all fear, and all uncer- 
tainly, and all ignorance shall be done away. 
There shall be no more sea, which means absence 
of storm, and strife, and danger and wreck. There 
will be no more separation, for the promise is, 
" They shall go no more out." 

" A little way to walk with you, my own — 
Only a little way, 
Then one of us must weep and walk alone 
Until God's day. 

" A little way! It is so sweet to live 
Together, that I know 
Life would not have one withered rose to give 
If one of us should go. 

" And if these lips should ever learn to smile, 
With thy heart far from mine, 
'T would be for joy that in a little while 
They would be kissed by thine! " 

There shall be no tears there, for God shall wipe 
them all away, and there shall be neither sorrow 
[118] 



The Entr ance Perfected 

nor sighing. We shall not grieve each other by 
our blind misunderstandings, and God will dry 
our tears for the most part, perhaps, just by 
showing us that our troubles have been benedic- 
tions in disguise. 

These might be called the negative blessings of 
Heaven. Paul has most perfectly summarized 
the positive blessings in a single sentence. " We 
are willing/ ' he says, " to be absent from the 
body, and to be at home with the Lord." 

Think of the unique happiness of home. We 
roam the world to find some greater joy, only to 
learn that we left joy behind when we turned our 
backs upon the fireside. Home is the place of 
love, where we grow rich by giving love and are 
crowned by receiving it. It is the place where we 
are understood, where our faults are known, and 
where we are still cherished in spite of all of 
them. It is the place of security, the place of 
supply, the place of beauty whose humble out- 
lines wax with our increasing age until it glows 
in glory and splendor unapproachable. It is the 
place to which, wander as we will, the homing 
instinct always draws us. Nansen and his men 
could conquer every obstacle of the Arctic save 
one. Gnawing hunger, deadly cold, the menace 
of the bergs, — these they met undaunted. But 
the Heimweh, the home-pain, they feared above 
all. It must be conquered if they were not to 
fail, and so they feverishly worked and played, 
gave concerts, invented games, celebrated birth- 
days — their own, the king's, the ship's, the 
dogs'. When they relaxed the effort to forget, 
[119] 



The Substance of Happiness 

tears coursed down the toil cut furrows of their 
faces and homesickness clutched like neuralgia at 
their hearts. When, on their ocean-isle, the 
goddess Calypso asks the long-exiled Ulysses why 
he would depart, he says : 

" Then have the truth; I speak as a man speaks; 
Pour out my heart like treasure at your feet. 
This odorous, amorous isle of violets, 
That leans all leaves into the glassy deep, 
With brooding music over noon-tide moss, 
And low dirge of the lily-swinging bee, — 
Then stars like opening eyes on closing flowers, — 
Palls on my heart. Ah, God! that I might see 
Gaunt Ithaca stand up out of the surge, 
Yon lashed and streaming rocks, and sobbing crags, 
The screaming gull and the wild-flying cloud, — 
To see far off the smoke of my own hearth, 
To smell far out the glebe of my own farms, 
To spring alive upon her precipices, 
And hurl the singing spear into the air; 
To scoop the mountain torrent in my hand, 
And plunge into the midnight of her pines; 
To look into the eyes of her who bore me, 
And clasp his knees who gat me in his joy, 
To prove if my son be like my dream of him." 

Long had the homing instinct of Ulysses been 
thwarted, but it was destined to be gratified. 
Many of us know that for us, that instinct will 
be a haunting sorrow throughout life. We wander 
across the college campus, years after our student 
days, to look into faces of a new generation. If 
the old dormitory has not been indeed torn down 
to make room for a new one, the old room has 
long been tenanted by others. Or, we appoint 
our anniversaries and our " old home week," 
and what are they but our pathetic attempt to 
stay the shadow on the dial and to find again a 
[120] 



The Entr arte e Perfected 

little of that old home atmosphere for which we 
faint? But the house where we were born, and 
the grounds where we used to play belong to 
others now, and we are sad outsiders. The village 
has grown unaccountably small, the streets have 
narrowed, the buildings are lower by half, and 
the home coming is a time when we know not 
whether to laugh or weep. 

To such emotions Paul was no stranger. He 
had known the happiness of a home once. Driven 
from it as an outcast to toil with those who mocked 
and scourged and imprisoned him, how poignant 
must have been his longings. Well he knew that 
the longing must be unsatisfied in this life; and 
then he did what the poet and the martyr and 
the outcast have always done. He let his home- 
lessness on earth lift him to the great thought of 
an eternal home beyond. 

Bryant, the poet, surrounded by the incompar- 
able blessings of his own home, could well afford 
to be calmly hopeful as he beheld the water-fowl. 

" He, who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone, 
Will lead my steps aright." 

But Paul, worn, haggard, hated, despised, bowed 
beneath the weight of loveless years, pours out 
his soul in one flashing, impetuous line of prose: 
" We are willing to be absent from the body, and 
to be at home with the Lord." 

In this word of Paul there throbs the con- 
sciousness that the most important factor in a 
home is the home-maker. A little child whose 
mother was ill, was long cared for by sympathetic 
[121] 



The Substance of Happiness 

neighbors. When she was brought back she went 
to one room after another calling everywhere 
" Mamma!" And then the friend who had 
sheltered her, caught her up, folded her close, 
and said; " Mother will never come back, my 
darling." When the tide of tears had ebbed, 
and when the little lips ceased quivering long 
enough to speak, they said only this: " Then 
take me home again with you." Truly the 
happiness of the home is the heart that keeps it, and 
Paul reveals the innermost, uttermost happiness 
of heaven, and reminds us that the secret of all 
happiness for time and eternity lies in union with 
God when he says: " For we are willing to be 
absent from the body, and to be at home with 
the Lord." 

Thus we come to the end of the seventh and 
last of our formal studies in happiness. At its 
best we have found it to be: A perfect, lasting, 
indefectible oneness with God. To find the 
beginnings of this oneness in the surrender of our 
wills to His will ; to make the daily task an expres- 
sion of desire for the more perfect attainment of 
this oneness, and a step toward that attainment; 
to be led by such experience of this oneness as 
we have attained to better service for the finite 
and more perfect communion with the Infinite; 
to feel this oneness in some rare, rapt moment, 
all but perfected; to wait through life in calm 
conviction of its perfecting beyond the incident 
of death, — this is to know the secret of happiness 
as God Himself reveals it. 

[122] 



The Entrance Perfected 

" For even the purest delight may pall, 
And power must fail, and pride must fall, 
And the love of the dearest friends grow small — 
But the glory of the Lord is all in all." 

And the glory of the Lord is not a phrase but an 
experience when Christ dwells in us and we in 
Him. 



[123] 



VIII 

THE MISTAKES OF FELIX 



[125] 



" And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, 
and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered^ 
Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient sea- 
son, I will call for thee."— Acts 24: 25. 



[126] 



VIII 



THE MISTAKES OF FELIX 

CONSIDER the mistakes of Felix. His birth 
might be called a mistake almost, for he 
was born a slave — a position unspeakably vile 
— in an epoch unspeakably vile, in a city unspeak- 
ably vile, and this meant not so much being born 
as being damned into life. But soon his keen-eyed 
Roman masters saw this was no common slave- 
child. He was cunning, unscrupulous, strong- 
willed — qualities worth while in a land where 
the gods slept, and might made right. So one 
day they set him free. So one day as he 

" Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, 

And grasps the skirts of happy chance, 
And breasts the blows of circumstance, 
And grapples with his evil star; 

" Who makes by force his merit known 

And lives to clutch the golden keys, 
To mold a mighty state's decrees, 
And shape the whisper of the throne;" 

this man, by sheer strength of character, began 
to project himself, to impress himself, upon the 
wide affairs of Rome. First, he became a courtier 
at the Imperial court; then part-rubr of Samaria; 
then ruler of all Samaria, and finally, as procura- 
[127] 



The Substance of Happiness 

tor of Judaea, the slave-child grown a man, 
combines within himself the civil and military 
authority of a great province. What secrets 
of blood and lust are buried in those obscurer 
years when as courtier and avenging soldier, he 
served the throne we cannot know. But from 
the time when he begins to govern Judaea, that 
fierce light of publicity which beats upon a throne 
reveals his life in full detail. He was savage, 
treacherous, greedy, corrupt, and steeped to the 
lips in the blood of private murder and public 
massacre. 

Somewhere amid his cares of state he had found 
time to win the beautiful Jewess Drusilla from 
her lawful husband to be his unlawful wife. She 
was of the line of Herod, and the new religion 
which Paul taught had touched her ancestry in 
ominous, dramatic fashion. Her father was 
that Herod who came into the vast, crowded 
amphitheatre at Csesarea one August day, 
clothed in a magnificent dress of silver tissue, 
to address the multitude. The sun, falling on the 
royal robes, so dazzled the beholders that they 
cried out: " He is not man, but a god!" " And 
immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, 
because he gave not God the glory: and he was 
eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost." Her 
grand-uncle was that Herod whom John the 
Baptist denounced for a sin like her own; who 
gave the head of John to the daughter of Herodias 
in a charger; and who afterward, made cowardly 
by a guilty conscience, feared that John had risen 
from the dead to haunt and trouble him. Her 
[128] 



The Mistakes of Felix 

great-grandfather was that Herod who, in the 
days of the infant Jesus, had decreed the slaughter 
of the innocents, and who, knowing that other- 
wise the land would be filled with rejoicing, 
ordered the execution of certain prominent Jews 
upon the day of his own death, that there might 
be tears for his funeral. 

Felix, and Drusilla, and Paul. Three world- 
types they are. Felix, the pagan, the unjust 
judge, the brutal soldier, the tyrannical ruler 
with the power of a king and the mind of a slave, 
living to gratify godless ambitions and swinish 
passions; Drusilla, the typical Jewess of a decad- 
ent age when the Mosaic ritual was admired but 
unheeded; and Paul, knightly Galahad of purity, 
herald of a new civilization, the bond-slave of 
Christ. And as we look we are suddenly aware 
that the two world-types must tremble before the 
preaching of the one. " And as he reasoned of 
righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, 
Felix trembled." " Righteousness " here means 
justice — justice between a man and his fellows. 
Yes, Felix would tremble as he listened! " Tem- 
perance " here means self-control. Yes, this guilty 
pair who had given free rein to unholy passion 
must tremble now! " And judgment to come " 

— the whole world — pagan, Jewish, Christian 

— understands that. It is a great mistake so to 
live that we must tremble when the brother- 
hood of man is preached. It is an awful mistake 
so to live — with the beast of appetite rending 
the lamb of continence — that we must tremble 
when self-control is preached. It is a fearful 

[129] 



The Substance of Happiness 

mistake so to forget that ultimate reference of 
the soul to God that we must tremble when we 
hear: "It is appointed unto men once to die, 
but after this the judgment." And though with 
Felix and Drusilla we go far back through cen- 
turies past, still does something of their sin come 
down the imperfect years to us. Are you unjust 
to your fellow-man, anywhere, in any way? 
Are you slave to any evil habit, evil passion? 
Are you so engrossed with cares and ambitions 
that you forget that we shall all stand before 
the judgment-seat of Christ? If this preaching 
of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to 
come touches you anywhere, do not do as Felix 
did when he sent Paul away, pleading for a con- 
venient season. Face your fault! Acknowledge 
it ! Grapple with it ! As strong men and candid 
women, with God's help, tear from your life its 
besetting sin. 

For the greatest mistake is never an unfor- 
tunate birth, nor even an evil life. The greatest 
mistake is this mistake which Felix made when 
he refused to abandon an evil life at the call of 
conscience. 

Breathless is that moment when great issues 
hang upon a human choice. We see Peter warming 
himself in the fire-light of the palace court when 
the question comes, " Art not thou also one of 
this man's disciples?" And we grow tense as we 
read, hoping against hope, even after all the 
lapse of years, that we have not read aright, and 
that Peter will be true. We read the story of 
great-hearted Brutus; of his passion for liberty; 
[130] 



The Mistake s of Felix 

of the false friends who by craft and falsehood 
work for his undoing, and the pulse quickens 
with every line. Will he choose Caesar or Cassius? 
Honor or dishonor? And we cannot pause until 
we reach the orchard-scene, where he reads the 
unsigned letter: " Shall Rome stand under one 
man's awe? What, Rome? ' Speak, strike, 
redress! 1 Am I entreated to speak, and strike? 
O Rome, I make the promise. If the redress 
will follow, thou receiv'st thy full petition at the 
hand of Brutus!" And which of us has not 
thrilled as Caesar reins back his horse upon the 
brink of Rubicon, while he debates, at dead of 
night, the wisdom of invasion? And if these 
are breathless crises, what shall we say of that 
crisis in which we hear, as Felix did, the clear 
voice of God, calling us from enmity and discord 
and incompleteness, into the abundant life of full 
friendship with Himself? Paul had deeply im- 
pressed Felix upon a former occasion, and he 
wished to hear more of that polished speech. 
It might throw some light upon that darkness, 
that mystery of things which he sometimes dimly 
felt, and before which his pagan gods were mute. 
Then, too, it might throw some light upon the 
very vexing problems of a Roman governor in a 
Jewish province. And Drusilla was frankly 
curious concerning this countryman of hers 
who left wealth, family and position to follow 
the Nazarene whose mission had so strangely 
touched her ancestors. Little did they know 
that Paul was a surgeon of the soul, who would 
cut them to the quick! Little did they know that 
[131] 



The Substance of Happiness 

he would take his audience for text; their sins 
for the heads of his discourse, and their doom for 
application! 

Would that God had seen fit to reveal Paul's full 
sermon as a model and masterpiece for all time! 
This preacher, the foremost man of his age, had 
been transformed on the Damascus road; threat- 
ened with death at Jerusalem; harried from 
Antioch; mobbed at Iconium; stoned at Lystra; 
scourged and imprisoned at Philippi; mocked at 
Athens; set upon by beasts at Ephesus; and 
again, at Jerusalem, smitten on the mouth — 
all for Christ's sake. With the subtile and per- 
vasive distillation of all his past experience of 
stress, agony, and triumph full upon him, he comes 
now to deliver God's great message to Felix and 
Drusilla. 

And what was the message? We are told that 
he reasoned of justice, of self-control, and of 
judgment. But we are also told that he spoke 
of " The faith in Christ." The brotherhood of 
men, as Jesus taught it to his disciples; the 
blazing ideal of purity which He held high aloft; 
that delineation of the judgment which He gave 
when He said: " The Son of man shall come in 
his glory and all the holy angels with him, then 
shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and 
before him shall be gathered all nations: and he 
shall separate them one from another, as a 
shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 
and he shall set the sheep on his right hand but 
the goats on the left. . . . And these shall 
go away into everlasting punishment: but the 
[132] 



The Mistakes of Felix 



righteous into life eternal " — these were the 
truths which rang in thrilling cadence from the 
hps of Paul. How he rises to the moral sublimity 
of his message! How the pagan procurator bends 
far forward, trembling with a nameless terror, 
as these mighty facts strike home upon the rem- 
nants of his conscience ! He faces now the supreme 
crisis, the supreme privilege, the supreme peril 
of irrevocable choice. Paul has reasoned of right- 
eousness, of temperance, and now, as he thunders 
of the coming judgment, his hand with its clanking 
chain lifts toward the Great White Throne. 
Which shall it be, Paul's way or Felix's way? 
God's way or Satan's way? Shall he mount the 
chariot of heaven, or shall hell's chariot-wheels 
sweep over and grind him into dust? His stub- 
born will must break! He must decide! But 
even as he trembles to the great decision, speaks 
in his ear the soul's most subtle enemy, the evil 
spirit of procrastination. His lightest whisper 
drowns the voice of Paul. " Delay," he says. 
" You need not choose now. A future day 
will do as well," and with that trembling gesture 
which seals his own doom, Felix waves Paul back. 
" Go thy way! Go thy way for this time ! When 
I have a convenient season, I will call for thee!" 

In this greatest error — the refusal to abandon 
an evil life at the call of conscience — we may 
trace the several errors which compose it. They 
are not unique. They are as common as life 
itself. 

First, there is the error of stifling spiritual 
conviction. There are certain efforts at expres- 
[133] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

sion which have this quality: They create in 
the mind of the listener a strong feeling that they 
must be heard to the uttermost. You hear the 
sweeping hallelujah chorus of The Messiah — 
that heavenly burst of tone which Handel said 
had been revealed to him by God Himself — and 
something within you says: " It would be nothing 
less than crime to still voice and instrument in the 
midst of this impassioned rapture." Or you listen 
to the symphony of a master until you know what 
John Keats meant when he spoke of " Music 
yearning like a god in pain/' and you say " This 
must continue until the composer has brought to 
my ear the uttermost fulness of his soul's aspi- 
ration. " Or you hear the more ethereal music 
of the spring-time, when unlocked fountains 
leap, and brooks laugh, and all the rivers, sung 
to by golden-throated birds, caressed by nodding 
flowers, dance seaward to the melody of their 
own tinkling feet, and you say " What calamity 
if the ice-king should fling his mantle wide and 
wrap all this in the chill of death." These are 
things which hold so much of promise and 
significance that they must go on to climax and 
conclusion. 

Surely, in that still small voice which sometimes 
speaks to us, there is a similar but more profound 
significance. It speaks to us of choices long de- 
layed; of a Saviour who patiently knocks at the 
door of the heart ; of evils in the life which should 
long since have been cast out. It urges: " Choose 
God as your eternal portion." It urges: "You 
who have chosen Him, and yet have narrowed 
[134] 



The Mistakes of Felix 

the margin between yourself and a godless world 
till none may tell with certainty where you stand, 
awake! Rend swift thy coffin-planks and live! 
Let the unstopped tides of life abundant beat 
throughout your being!" This, above all voices, 
must have full utterance, for it is God's own 
message to the soul. And how do we receive it? 
Too often we turn away. We will not listen. 
We know that if we listen to the end we must do 
its bidding, and we have no wish to do its bidding. 
We stifle it in endless windings, fold on fold, of 
the filmy fabric of procrastination. We refuse 
God's great gift, even communion with the Most 
High, and say even unto Him: " Go thy way for 
this time." 

A second mistake in the great mistake of refusal 
was this : Felix did not know a convenient season 
when he met it. A convenient season! What 
season could by any possibility be more conven- 
ient than this? With the foremost man of the 
age addressing him, in terms precisely suited 
to his case; with all the world shut out, and he 
so convinced and convicted that he trembled — 
what more convenient season might ever be? 
And the root of the error here lies in putting any 
weight whatever on external circumstances as 
deterrents of spiritual advance. We say that 
when this piece of work is done; this additional 
fortune accumulated; this family or social rela- 
tionship made different, we shall find it easier to 
do right. But no set of external circumstances 
ever constituted a convenient season. Though 
we make circumstances to suit ourselves, in which 
[135] 



The S ub stance of Happiness 

every influence is uplifting, unless God bids us 
rise, we cannot rise. And our circumstances may 
seem calculated to drag us to the lowest depths, 
but if God speaks, conscience wakes, and duty's 
path shines clear, it is for us the convenient sea- 
son. There were saints in the moral miasma of 
brutal Nero's household; while in the heavenly 
air of the apostolic church Ananias and Sapphira 
played the hypocrite. The time to resolve highly 
is when you are moved to high resolve. He who 
does not turn to God when he is drawn to God will 
never turn to God. And all this pitiful delaying 
and excusing is but a terrible trifling with the 
supreme, eternal issues of our lives. 

Note the difference between Paul and Felix. 
Paul has witnessed the martyrdom of Stephen, 
and, believing the time propitious for stamping 
out the new heresy, takes his commission and goes 
storming toward Damascus to ravage and de- 
stroy. Then, smitten by the dazzling light, and 
stunned by the Voice he says, " Lord, what wilt 
thou have me to do?" And when the answer 
comes, " Preach where you have persecuted, bind 
up where you have broken, build where you have 
burned down," without a moment *s hesitation, 
counting all things but loss for the excellency 
of the knowledge of Jesus Christ his Lord, he 
sloughed off the old life like a polluted garment, 
and came forth in the glory of the new. But 
Felix, utterly convicted of the wrong within, 
would only say: " Go thy way for this time; 
when I have a convenient season I will call for 
thee." This is the difference between a Paul 
[136] 



The Mistakes of Felix 



and a Felix; between a man and one who is some- 
thing less. Show a man that he is wrong, and 
by God's help he will be right. Show a trifling 
procrastinator that he is wrong, and he says: 
" Go thy way, now. Perhaps at some dim dis- 
tant day I shall strive for better things. " 

The third mistake in the great mistake of refusal 
was this: Felix did not know that delay was, in 
reality, decision. If you do not make a will you 
nevertheless dispose of your property in a hard 
and fast way. If cholera breaks out and you 
debate whether or not you will flee, so long as you 
debate you are deciding to stay. If you see two 
antagonists in a death-grapple, and you debate 
whether or not this may be a justifiable homicide, 
you are abetting a murder. If your boat spring 
a leak in mid-channel, and you sit debating 
whether you will bail or not, you are deciding to 
drown. If in the Alpine height, with an ava- 
lanche roaring behind, and a chasm to be leaped 
in front, you stand debating whether you can 
make the leap or not, you are really deciding to 
be swept down to death. And whenever you face 
the supreme spiritual issues and decide that you 
will not decide, you do, to all intents and pur- 
poses, reject. 

" The brave makes danger opportunity; 
The waverer, paltering with the chance sublime, 
Dwarfs it to peril." 

And peril deepens into doom. For Felix never 
thrilled again to the preaching of St. Paul. 

Are you, facing a crisis akin to that of Felix, 
making his reply? Are you conscious that into 
[137] 



The Substa?ice of Happiness 



your error of refusal enter the errors which entered 
his? Are you stifling spiritual conviction? Are 
you failing to recognize your convenient season? 
Are you unaware that delay is in reality decision? 
Then let me appeal to you as Paul must surely 
have appealed to Felix had not Felix silenced him. 
And what would that appeal have been? Once, 
when a man, all affrighted as Felix was, came, 
and, scorning every subterfuge, cried out " What 
must I do to be saved?" Paul answered and 
said: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and 
thou shalt be saved." And this, this only is the 
message : If we would be Christ-men, or if, being 
Christ-men, we would be more completely Christ- 
men; if we are in dead earnest about it, and 
willing to surrender utterly our hedging, dodging, 
failing, falling lives to Him, we may grow this 
day, and every day more and more into His 
perfect likeness. Hear the blessed, mighty truth 
— if you are in dead earnest, concerning the 
transcendent interests of } T our i mm ortal self. 
Surrender your life to Him — completely, im- 
mediately — and though your sins be as scarlet, 
they shall be as white as snow. Though they be 
red like crimson, they shall be as wool! 



[138] 



IX 

THE GIFT OF POWER AND LOVE 



[139] 



" For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but 
of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. 11 

—2 Timothy 1: 7. 



[140] 



IX 



THE GIFT OF POWER AND LOVE 

PAUL had known Timothy from boyhood. 
He had taught him the fundamentals of the 
faith. He had watched his progress with affec- 
tionate interest. When Timothy had been set 
apart to the work of an evangelist, by the laying 
on of hands by Paul and the presbytery, the 
fortunes of the two were united in strenuous 
endeavor for the cause of Christ. Now Timothy, 
young in years and in the experience of great 
responsibility, has been placed in charge of the 
church at Ephesus, the church which " lost " 
its " first love." Paul is nearing the end of life, 
but he must write one more letter before the stylus 
falls from his stiffened fingers, and it shall be for 
his " beloved and faithful child in the Lord." 
He knows Timothy's crushing burdens, and he 
knows his weaknesses — his dearth of energy, 
his lack of confidence and his wavering courage. 
He will hearten him, if he can. And standing in 
the valley of the shadow, speaking to one whom 
he loves tenderly, out of the fulness of his own 
profound experiences, he gave, not to Timothy 
only, but to the whole world a priceless posses- 
sion — an admonition and a testimony which 
[141] 



The Substance of Happiness 

enshrines his personality at its greatest. " I 
have fought a good fight, I have finished my 
course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there 
is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which 
the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at 
that day. But ere I go, Timothy, be reminded 
that God did not give to us the spirit of cowardice, 
but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." 

The gift of power. As we read, our thought 
goes back to Pentecost. A company of disciples, 
huddled like timid sheep in an upper room, and 
all uncertain of the future — and then the sound 
as of a mighty rushing wind, cloven tongues as 
of fire, and these same men go out to persecution 
and unflinching martyrdom. Surely, this is God's 
great gift of power, the gift of the Spirit at 
Pentecost. 

But the fire of Pentecost has tempered the metal 
of Christian character even until now. That the 
Founder of the faith was a colorless weakling, 
and that the disciples are a set of puling anaemics, 
is not an uncommon estimate. But when we 
turn to the story of the Crusades, in one of which, 
for example, six hundred thousand pilgrim- 
warriors fought so desperately along the way 
that only forty thousand were left for the final 
onslaught on the holy city, we begin to suspect 
that the common estimate is in error. And this 
impression is not lessened as we read how the 
forty thousand, after a siege of five weeks, over- 
throw the defenses of the city, and marching in, 
crown their leader, Godfrey of Bouillon, king of 
Jerusalem. Concerning the Master, the testimony 
[142] 



The Gift of Power and Love 

of a brilliant man of letters is worth noting. " In- 
stead of looking at books and pictures about the 
New Testament I looked at the New Testament. 
There I found an account, not in the least of a 
person with his hands clasped in appeal, but of 
an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and 
acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting 
out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the 
wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful 
demagogy; a being who often acted like an 
angry god — and always like a god. . . . The 
diction used about Christ has been, and perhaps 
wisely, sweet and submissive. But the diction 
used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; 
it is full of camels leaping through needles and 
mountains hurled into the sea. Morally it is 
equally terrific; He called Himself a sword of 
slaughter, and told men to buy swords if they sold 
their coats for them." 

As with Jesus, so with Paul; and the granite 
strength beneath the tender screening vines and 
flowers had not been hidden from the eyes of 
Timothy. He knew the life of the great apostle 
intimately. He knew how Paul had risen from 
the staggering light of his conversion, and how, 
buffeted back by Jewish unbelief he had turned 
to the Gentiles. He knew the whole long story 
of heroic endeavor with its failures and its agonies. 
Of scourging and stoning and shipwreck; of 
facing tyrants, and fighting beasts, and braving 
fetid prisons; of churches founded through iron 
labor and maintained in travail of soul; of truth 
proclaimed and heresy refuted; of the forsaking 
[143] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

of friends; of the incessant stab of " the thorn 
in the flesh/ ' of the passionate yearning for souls 
which consumed the man as some brief candle 
burns swiftly to its socket — of all this Timothy 
is aware. And he knows, too, that soon the great 
apostle, " wan, haggard, hated, despised, fettered 
and in rags," must stand before the judgment- 
seat of brutal Nero while death stands grimly 
waiting just beyond. How this letter must have 
fired Timothy with valor! How it must touch 
every man who reads it as with a flame ! Forever 
after Paul must have been to Timothy as one who 
ever stood with eyes and hand uplifted toward a 
cross, while with his mighty testimony mingled 
always the clanking of a chain! 

The gift of power, and of love. Love, then, is 
the directing agent. Power is nothing; it is worse 
than nothing, if undirected or misdirected. But 
love is something more than an agent for guiding 
power; it is an agent for finding truth. Without 
it, we learn little. Love and logic must go hand 
in hand to the goal of right conclusion or each 
will miss it widely. Man's passionate, if dim 
awareness of this fact may be seen in his devotion 
to those mighty ones of history, who, like Lincoln, 
show forth most perfectly in their characters this 
dualism of heart and brain. It may be seen as he 
slowly weaves this, his deeper instinct, into the 
fabric of his institutions. His " trial by jury," 
for example, is an assertion that the relentless 
logic of the legalist must be balanced by the 
humane impulses of the layman. He has his 
schools of law, with able faculties and elaborate 
[144] 



The Gift of Power and Love 



curricula, founded and maintained at high expense 
for the education of legal specialists, some of 
whom he places on the bench and some at the 
bar. The able counsel for the prosecution and 
for the defense may elicit and marshal the facts, 
but a jury of twelve plain men must decide what 
conclusion shall be drawn from the facts. The 
learned judge will pass sentence, but only on the 
basis of what twelve plain men believe to be the 
equities of the case. And, faulty as the system 
may be, it is not abandoned, nor will society con- 
sent to deliver the prisoner at the bar to the 
tender mercies of legal specialists, who, by reason 
of acquired limitations, are unfitted to draw 
conclusions from all the facts, which include facts 
of life, as well as facts of law. 

The day will come when the same rule will 
apply to the specialist in every field. To the 
worker in physical science we shall render high 
honor but we shall accept his conclusions with 
caution, reserving the right to argue to our own 
conclusions from his premises. We shall revere 
the scholarship of the Biblical critic; we shall 
esteem him highly for his works' sake; we shall 
regard him as a material witness of the highest 
consequence or as an examining lawyer of sur- 
passing skill, but we shall gently and firmly insist 
that he be excluded from the jury-box. 

To what amazing inconsistencies one may be 
led who draws conclusions by a process of cold 
and unilluminated reason may be seen in the 
case of Charles Darwin. Mr. Darwin was an 
[145] 



The Substance of Happiness 

Agnostic. The word means " not knowing. " 
The principle Upon which he proceeded was that 
of coming to the consideration of a thing divested 
of all prejudices and preconceptions either of 
affirmation or denial, and limiting conclusions to 
that which is demonstrated by rational evidence. 
In this he is for the most part consistent. He 
makes a study of the unconscious cell for exam- 
ple, and though it may seem incredible that man 
with all his potencies, accomplishments and aspir- 
ations is hidden there, he holds steadily to his 
method. He considers the anthropoid ape, and 
while it is hard to believe that man can have 
ascended from this brute whose so human hands 
have never plucked a harp-string, nor builded a 
bridge — other than by grasping the tail of a 
fellow-ape ! — nor wielded pen, nor lighted fire, 
nor lifted even a hut to dwell in, still our scientist 
divests himself of all feeling of an inherent cred- 
ibility or incredibility, and applies himself de- 
voutly to a study of the facts. So consistent is 
he in the sphere of physical science that we are 
the more amazed at his attitude when he comes 
to consider the Christian religion. He drifted 
away from Christianity, so he tells us, because 
of a feeling that it was a priori incredible that 
God would reveal Himself in the form of a Galilean 
peasant, in the little land of Palestine! Surely 
there were facts in plenty for his consideration. 
There were four books purporting to tell the story 
of that revealing; four men whose witness offers 
the widest field for investigation, and a stream 
of influence which has been of unrivalled signifi- 
[146] 



The Gift of Power and Love 



cance from its beginning. By every canon of 
his scientific creed he was required to make these 
the basis of investigation and to utter no con- 
clusion which was not based squarely on that 
investigation. But he refuses to hear evidence, 
deserts the central principle of his philosophy, 
and reverses himself, — we would say stultifies 
himself — if it were not for the reverence in which 
we hold his name. Can it be that he had so 
immured himself between the dead walls of the 
material that no cooling wind of love might true 
his toiling brain? That he had so long considered 
man a thing to be studied, as to forget that he is 
first of all a being who needs to be loved, with the 
love of companionship and the love of Redemp- 
tion? That if Charles Darwin had found a place 
for sentiments beside his syllogisms he might 
have avoided this bewildering inconsistency? It 
may indeed be so. 

The gift of power, and of love, and of a sound 
mind. The Revised Version gives us " disci- 
pline" in place of " sound mind." The gift of 
power and love constitute a moral corrective, a 
power for the enlargement of men's lives, a sal- 
vation, which, though divinely bestowed upon 
Timothy, was not his to keep, but to use for others. 
True for Timothy, it is no less true for us. Our 
gift of power and love is not to hoard, but to use. 
It is not the boon of the few, it is the hope of 
the world. And the high task which Christ 
bequeathed to us is the application of His gift 
to the lives of men. 

Throughout the Christian era men have toiled 
[147] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

splendidly at this task, and no story is more fas- 
cinating or inspiring than the story of applied 
Christianity, particularly in the last century. 
Now a voice bids us return to the simple com- 
munism of the first disciples; now Carlyle, decry- 
ing in rugged speech the commercialism of his 
time, the cruelty of trade and the speciousness 
of politicians, demands that England's men shall 
fit themselves to wage a holy war. Now Ruskin 
decrying wealth that sinks a man in ignoble liv- 
ing as a belt of gold might sink him in the sea, 
exclaims: " The only wealth is life; all other 
wealth is illth." Now Maurice and Kingsley, 
decrying competition, declare it to be death, and 
bear solemn witness that co-operation only can 
spell life for society. Now Christian socialism 
begins its wide activity in countries Catholic, 
and Protestant. Now a poet pleads for a truer 
benevolence : 

" Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare. 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three — 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me." 

And the answer of the multitude rolls back: 
" We ask no alms; give us work and justice, not 
pity/ while a poet of more deeply divining pas- 
sion responds as he gazes upon Labor brutalized: 

a O, masters, lords and rulers in all lands, 
Is this the handiwork you give to God, 
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? 
How will you ever straighten up this shape; 
Touch it again with immortality; 
Give back the upward looking and the light ; 
Rebuild in it the music and the dream; 

[148] 



The Gift of Power and Love 

Make right the immemorial infamies, 
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? " 

If we turn aside from these ideas and ten- 
dencies, all of which claim the authority of Jesus, 
to ask how far the social spirit of Christianity has 
made itself tangible in institutions, we find these 
to be innumerable. What schools, colleges, foun- 
dations; what fraternal associations, organized 
charities, consumers' leagues and labor unions; 
what milk-kitchens, day-nurseries, homes for the 
aged, hospitals and free dispensaries ; what Bethels 
for the sailor, and civic centers for the landsman, 
until it is said one person in every nine in the city 
of New York receives charity in some form, and 
until the mention of a hundredth part of the 
philanthropic activities of that city alone would 
exhaust the time allotted to an entire sermon. 
Failing often in detail, and mistaken now and 
again, yet is it a movement so admirable as a 
whole, that no one may view it without thrilling 
to its significance. 

So glorious is this movement that one may 
well hesitate before the ungracious task of point- 
ing out its dangers. But the ungracious task 
may be none the less a profitable one, and the 
fact that there are dangers here, is one which we 
may not ignore. There is danger, for example, 
that in our desire to make a general application 
of Christian helpfulness we may lose our intimate 
personal relation to Christ. He who is directly 
engaged in some form of Christian work does not 
feel this danger keenly. Indeed he quickly 
learns that if his work is to have power and per- 
[ 149 ] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 



manence he must keep close to the source of 
power and love. He cannot shine unless shone 
upon; he cannot be strong unless empowered; he 
cannot build without foundations. Peril is rather 
for the man of wealth whose financial aid makes 
the work possible. A bank-check is not a sub- 
stitute for prayer, or devotional Bible reading, 
or the " means of grace," nor for that " love in 
action " without which religion becomes Pharisa- 
ism, and which is unthinkable apart from intelli- 
gent sympathy. A bank-check — especially a 
generous one — is a thing of beauty so long as 
it is an expression of true religion. If it is a sub- 
stitute for religion it becomes as unlovely as a 
dried husk of formalism — which it is. 

Another danger is that we forget the dis- 
tinction between the propagation and the applica- 
tion of Christianity. These two are not identical. 
They differ as the generation and application of 
electricity differ, though perhaps the comparison 
is not altogether fair, because Christianity is 
propagated to an extent — perhaps a great ex- 
tent — by its practical application. Yet the dis- 
tinction is sufficiently wide to make it a matter 
of real importance in our thinking and in our 
giving. 

Where we shall place the emphasis, whether 
upon application or propagation, will depend 
very much upon our views touching certain funda- 
mental questions. If the Bible is as other books; 
if Jesus differs from other men not in kind, but 
only in degree; if the Gospel is not a panacea, 
but only one of many palliatives, then our interest 
[150] 



The Gift of Power and Love 

will be in the charity which is most obvious and 
insistent. If, on the other hand, the Bible is 
uniquely inspired; if Jesus is uniquely divine; if 
the Gospel is a radical revolutionary power; if 
there is none other Name under heaven, given 
among men, whereby we must be saved, then, 
while we do not forget the charities which do so 
easily beset us, we shall inquire concerning cer- 
tain other matters. How is it with the Book? 
Is it being translated, circulated, read? How is 
it with the small college which seldom appears 
in the public prints, and seldom enjoys large bene- 
factions, but which supplies almost our entire 
ministerial and missionary corps? How is it with 
the theological seminary? Is it true to the faith? 
Is it well equipped for its vital work? How is 
it with evangelism? One layman of our denom- 
ination devoted thousands of dollars to this cause 
before his death, and remembered it generously 
in his will, in order that preachers of marked 
evangelistic gift might go among the churches 
in a specific attempt to bring men to definite, 
articulate choice of Jesus Christ as Saviour. 
Another layman of our church, turning from 
those worthy philanthropies which make such 
constant and well-nigh irresistible appeal, be- 
queathed a fortune of many millions to our own 
boards of benevolence. Men of this type are 
not indifferent to their frequent opportunties 
for practical Christian charity. They contribute 
largely to such needs, but always with the con- 
tribution goes the thought: " These ought ye to 
have done, and not to leave the other undone; for 
[151] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

without the doing of the other, these will speedily 
cease to be." 

And we may add this: He who goes out to his 
work of Christian charity most lovingly and gen- 
erously, will be led, if he go thoughtfully, to search 
most quickly for some power less hopeless than 
his own. When John the Baptist had wakened 
the dormant spiritual life and quickened the 
spiritual hunger of the men of his time until they 
followed him in multitudes, he was suddenly 
aware how impotent he was to satisfy the cravings 
he had stirred, and despairing of his own powers, 
could only point to One mightier than himself 
who, baptizing not with water but with the Holy 
Ghost, should mingle man's finite with God's 
infinite, and who, far beyond the mere evoking 
of the consciousness of human dereliction in the 
hearts of mankind, was the very Lamb of God to 
take away the sin of the world. The experience 
of John the Baptist is the experience of every man 
who, loving his neighbor as himself, strives to 
help the needy, the overborne, the sinful, toward 
the heights. The unutterable need of the world 
in its vice, its folly, its indolence, its blindness — 
how far beyond all human help it is! And the 
man who would really aid is driven to look for 
something which cuts beneath formal benevo- 
lence, and beneath the current social philoso- 
phies, a something which is none other than that 
of which Jesus spoke to Nicodemus one night in 
old Jerusalem: " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 
except a man be born anew, he cannot see the 
Kingdom of God. Except a man be born of 
[152] 



The Gift of Power and Love 

water and the Spirit he cannot enter the King- 
dom of God. And as Moses lifted up the serpent 
in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man 
be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him 
may have eternal life." 

The gift of power to do the truth; the gift of 
love to discern the truth; and the truth itself to 
be everywhere and by all means propagated and 
applied. It may seem that the text as developed 
applies best to those of wealth and influence — 
to men of large affairs. But every man who prays 
is a man of large affairs. Every man who loves 
is a man of eternal potency. Moreover, the text 
is one before which all superficial differences 
vanish if we make it the test of spiritual life. 
You may be rich or poor, influential or obscure, 
but these things are forgotten as you ask yourself 
the all-important question, " How far have I 
laid hold upon God's gift of power and love in 
Jesus Christ; and how far have I by prayer and 
offering, by spoken word and silent eloquence 
of character, projected these upon my fellow-men?' ' 
And this is the test which Jesus would have us 
use. For remember how he has said to us: " By 
their fruits ye shall know them." 



[153] 



X 

THE IMMORTALITY OF GOODNESS 



[155] 



"Noah was a good man and perfect in his genera- 
Hons, and Noah walked with God." — Genesis 6: 9. 



[ 156 ] 



THE IMMORTALITY OF GOODNESS 

CONSIDER the immortality of goodness as 
illustrated by the life of Noah. Many and 
terrible were the forces which beset him. He 
met them all, not by brute force, nor skill of speech, 
nor scientific learning, nor by any miraculous 
power of self-preservation but by the power of 
simple goodness, obedience, and sound judg- 
ment. And our last glimpse of his enemies shows 
them overwhelmed by many waters, while Noah 
stands triumphant beneath the rainbow of God's 
love. 

The first destructive force which he must meet 
is hate. And this will appear when we consider 
the environment in which he lived. Its distin- 
guishing marks are two, bloodshed and immor- 
ality. Cain slew his brother in the field but 
instead of being branded with ignominy in the 
popular imagination he seems to have become the 
national hero. No mother named her little son 
after Abel, but the name of Cain was common, 
and " Cainan " and " Tubal-Cain " commemo- 
rated the fratricide. Blood-lust inspires the 
songs of the people and Lamech chants his powers 
as a slayer in the ears of his admiring wives, 
[157] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

declaring that while Cain may have been a re- 
doubtable fighter, he is not to be compared with 
Lamech : 

" For I have slain a man for wounding me, 
And a young man for bruising me: 
If Cain shall be avenged seven-fold, 
Truly Lamech seventy and seven-fold." 

It was a society in which neither intellectual, 
nor spiritual, but physical giants were " men of 
renown," and women preferred as husbands those 
whose chief recommendation was brute strength, 
hoping thereby to raise up a gens, a body of blood- 
kindred, who might hold sway among their 
fellows by force of arms. It was a society doomed 
to destruction because it placed the warrior 
above the teacher and the priest, and buried its 
spiritual values beneath a flagrant materialism. 

When a man is murdered in cold blood on Broad- 
way, with little or no attempt at concealment, we 
shudder. When we are told that the number of 
homicides per 100,000 of population in Manhattan 
and the Bronx is 5.1, in Washington 6.8, in Chi- 
cago 8.4, in Cincinnati 9.4, in San Francisco 11.2, 
in St. Louis 12.6, in Louisville 16.5, in Atlanta 
17.1, in New Orleans 22.2, in Savannah 25.6, 
in Charleston 27.7, and in Memphis 47.1, — we 
shudder more violently still. But herein lies 
our hope of betterment — we are able to shudder; 
while in the days of Noah men, and women too, 
gloried in their homicidal shame. 

Of the immorality of the time the early chapters 
of Genesis give much evidence. If women made 
[158] 



The Immortality of Goodness 

physical strength the sole basis of sex selection 
men chose wives on the sole basis of physical 
beauty. The " Sons of God/ 5 the men to whom 
God had particularly revealed His will, married 
idolatresses when they " saw that they were 
fair." And a process began with which we are 
familiar, — the scaling down to his wife's level 
of a husband's spiritual life. Seldom indeed can 
a man help a wife to his plane, if it is higher than 
her own — though sometimes a wife may per- 
form this service for a husband. Almost inva- 
riably, while a man may discover that his highest 
self is unmet in his chosen mate, while he is 
vaguely conscious of a lack which he cannot, or 
will not analyze, he gradually accommodates him- 
self to her viewpoint and another family is lost 
to distinguished service in the cause of Christ, 
another breach is made in that guarding wall, 
which, if society is to escape the onslaught of 
the enemy, must be held unbroken. 

Notice too, that all this murder and lust is of 
the very roots of character. Other ancient 
books would portray the evils of an age by listing 
them. The Bible goes straight to the core of 
things. It does not say that every act of man was 
evil, but every formation of the thoughts of his 
heart was evil. And the inward evil was not mixed 
with good, nor did it alternate with good. It was 
unrelenting and without intermission. Listen 
to the full indictment as given in the fifth verse 
of the sixth chapter of Genesis, and if you weigh 
each word you will realize that in its sheer terri- 
bleness none has ever been brought against any 
[159] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

society which may be compared with it. " And 
God saw that the wickedness of man was great 
in the earth, and that every imagination of the 
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." 

In this environment walks Noah, a man right- 
eous, and, by comparison with his contemporaries, 
worthy to be called perfect, one who did all that 
God commanded him. To men of his generation 
he preached God's truth. He did not exhort 
them to build an ark, but to repent and so avert 
the necessity of ark and flood. Such are all 
God's warnings, from Genesis to Revelation. It 
is never " punishment must be " but always 
" punishment must be, unless." And Noah's 
preaching was not of the certainty of divine 
vengeance but of a natural, necessary retribution 
for a people given over to impurity and murder. 
" Do you imagine that you are founding undying 
dynasties, or building bulwarks against a swift 
oblivion? I tell you no! and except you repent 
and turn again, every man of you, from his evil 
way, the flood of destruction must overwhelm 
you utterly." 

To preach thus meant to be the best-hated man 
alive. Such is the invariable history when right- 
eous men preach unwelcome truth to the un- 
righteous. Stephen was the spiritual descendent 
of Noah, and in the day when his enemies stoned 
him to death he bore witness to this fact. " Ye 
stiffnecked and uncircumcised in hearts and ears, 
ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your 
fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets 
have not your fathers persecuted? and they have 
[160] 



The Immortality of Goodness 

slain them which shewed before of the coming 
of the Just One: of whom ye have been now the 
betrayers and murderers: who have received the 
law by the disposition of angels, and have not 
kept it." 

After hate, came ridicule. Unable to reform 
his age, Noah must now escape the inevitable 
deluge, and the building of the ark is begun. 
" He has preached so much about a flood," 
said his neighbors, " that at last he really believes 
in it himself. " There was such a rare good chance 
for the wits now, that few failed to take advantage 
of it. 

Ridicule is a trenchant weapon, provided always 
that the man or institution ridiculed deserves it. 
England, is your debtors' prison full of spectres? 
Is your Chancery court starving the widow and 
the fatherless? Then beware, for Charles Dick- 
ens is writing his little Dorrit and his Bleak 
House, and you shall stand condemned before 
the world. Are your upper classes mean and 
ignoble? Then be warned. When Thackeray shall 
write his Book of Snobs and his Vanity Fair 
your shame shall be uncovered. William Marcy 
Tweed, is it true that you are looting the Com- 
monwealth? Take care. That painter fellow — 
Nast they call him — is not merely making long 
strokes with a pencil. He is forging fetters for 
you. And if you listen, you shall hear the clang- 
ing of an iron door! But against the just, satire 
has no lasting power. " Who can refute a sneer?' ' 
asks one, and the answer is " Time." Dry den 
may overwhelm Shadwell with his bitter lines, 
[161] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

but the verdict of history is that Dryden was 
monarch of virulence, rather than that Shadwell 
was " monarch of dullness." Ridicule may slay 
shams; it cannot kill realities. Voltaire — won- 
derful, flashing, rapier-penned Voltaire — may 
shatter the false, but even his genius for contempt 
is powerless against the truth of God. 

And when hate for Noah changed to ridicule, 
we can hear the visitor asking: " What's become 
of Noah? Haven't heard of his preaching lately." 
" Why, haven't you heard? He's building an ark, 
and on my word, it will be the queerest looking 
craft afloat, if he ever gets it done." We see the 
group of young bloods going by, their talk all 
of the latest killing or the latest tale of lust. ' ' How 
are you getting on with the old tub, anyway? 
Room for a lot of us in that I daresay! But no! 
it would be a bit dull for us. We won't buy tickets 
today!" There is no answer, and they pass on. 
No answer? Listen! There is your answer, ye 
who scoff! It is the boom of a hammer on a 
hollow hull of gopher wood. It is the rasp of a 
saw in a cypress board. No answer? Look! 
It is a cloud that creeps across the sun. No 
answer? Feel! It is the slash of rain to chill the 
hot scorn within you and to choke the jest that 
rises to your curling lips. And you, O gallant 
mariner, no longer shall you hear on all sides, 
" from innumerable tongues a dismal universal 
hiss, the sound of public scorn," for the joke is 
turned now, and ridicule drowned forever in 
cloud-burst and tidal wave. 

With hate and ridicule survived, Noah must 
[162] 



The Immortality of Goodness 



still encounter the perils of the flood itself. Now 
there have been times when the story of the 
deluge has been so hard pressed by critics that 
we have been all but ready to abandon it. We 
were told that as so many other peoples had a 
like tradition the tale in Genesis was unworthy 
of credence. But after awhile we awoke to see 
the strangeness of such reasoning, and saw that 
this was an argument for the occurrence and not 
one against it. The variant accounts, coming 
from China, and India, and Persia, the North 
American Indians, and the Pacific Islanders, 
from every race in fact, except the black race, 
confirm rather than destroy our faith. We may 
indeed be glad of the Babylonian account, which 
resembles most closely the Bible story, because 
it reveals Noah as a man whose heart could be 
moved by pity. " When the storm came to 
an end/' he says, " and the terrible water-spout 
ceased, I opened the window and the light smote 
upon my face. I looked at the sea attentively 
observing and the whole of humanity had returned 
to mud, like seaweed the corpses floated. I was 
seized with sadness; I sat down and wept and 
my tears fell upon my face." 

" We may regard the deluge as a historical 
fact, preserved in many forms," said the late 
Professor Harper, " an actual and terrible event 
which made so powerful an impression upon the 
imaginations of the first parents of our species 
that their descendants could never forget it. The 
deluge was a fact; it was a part of a great plan; 
its record as handed down to us in the Hebrew 
[163] 



The Substance of Happiness 

Scriptures is the one clear, distinct account, and 
when compared with the other accounts bears 
on its face indications of its divine origin. ' The 
fact of the flood is not shaken by tradition, neither 
is it shaken by science. A scientist who has 
devoted many years to the geological problem 
involved says: " While we need not maintain 
that science demonstrates the truth of the Bibli- 
cal account, we can say that it presents no insuper- 
able objection to the account when properly 
interpreted, while it does add plausibility to the 
story by bringing clearly before our minds a 
period of geological history, since man came into 
the world, during which there was a great insta- 
bility of the continents, and a succession of 
catastrophes, startling in their magnitude, and 
short in their duration, which may well have 
culminated in the Noachian deluge. " We should 
also bear in mind that the " face of the earth " 
does not signify the face of the earth as we now 
know it. It means only that part with which 
Noah was more or less familiar, — Western 
Asia, and probably Egypt, with possibly the 
Mediterranean Country added. Those who have 
sympathized with Noah in his Herculean task of 
bringing polar bears and musk-oxen from the 
arctic and boa-constrictors from the tropics, 
will find relief if they will refrain from putting 
such tests of literalness on the language of Scrip- 
ture as would condemn ordinary conversation 
for a tissue of lies. If we say of a political meeting, 
" Everyone was there," we do not expect to be 
[164] 



The Immortality of Goodness 

taken literally. If we tell a child to pick up " all 
the books," we do not mean all the books in the 
world. If a young lady, summering at Bar 
Harbor, says, " Really, there is no one in town," 
we know very well that New York has about its 
usual four million inhabitants, and that the 
speaker has in mind only her particular friends. 
The statements in the narrative concerning the 
animals taken into the ark may be taken literally 
if anyone insists. Every species of animals 
even as they are now known to naturalists, could 
have found shelter. There are something less 
than three hundred mammalia larger than sheep; 
less than eight hundred between the sheep and 
the rats; less than fourteen hundred rats, bats, 
and shrews. The average size of these is that of 
a domestic cat. Allowing five square feet of 
deck-room for each animal, two of every species 
of mammalia could find room on two-thirds of 
one deck. Pairs representing ten thousand species 
of birds, a thousand species of reptiles, twelve 
hundred species of lizards, and over one hundred 
thousand species of insects could be placed on 
the remaining third without difficulty, thus leaving 
two entire decks for the family of Noah and for 
provender. That the natural ferocity which 
might cause animals to prey upon each other 
under normal conditions, would probably dis- 
appear here, as it always does before great natural 
catastrophes, is not to be denied. But it is by 
no means necessary to understand the statement 
in a literal sense. In fact the words " clean and 
unclean," seem to indicate that chiefly those 
[165] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

animals useful to man were preserved, and that 
no wild animals were brought into the ark. 
That we take no unwarranted liberties with the 
language of Scripture in this interpretation will 
be apparent if we recall the general usage of the 
Book. When Jesus says that the Queen of Sheba 
" came from the uttermost parts of the earth " 
we know that it is not literally true. When the 
author of Acts reports that in Jerusalem at 
Pentecost were people " out of every nation under 
heaven/' we do not even consider impeaching 
him for exaggeration. A fair and careful study 
concerning the land submerged, and the animal 
life preserved, will convince us that the account 
of the flood as given in Genesis presents no insuper- 
able difficulties to belief. 

Noah had no difficulty in accepting the facts 
of the situation but mastering the situation may 
well have taxed him to the utmost. The ark was 
fairly large, comparing favorably with our larger 
steamships. It was about four hundred and 
fifty feet long, seventy feet wide, and forty three 
feet deep. It could float in still water, but any 
turmoil of waves must have overturned and sunk 
it. When all was ready the record is " The Lord 
shut him in." What peril, what loneliness, what 
irrevocableness is here! To be set adrift, im- 
prisoned by the very hand of God; to float 
" alone, alone, all, all alone, alone on a wide, 
wide sea " which in monstrous silence submerges 
all mankind; to bear the crushing responsibility 
of the ark and its living cargo through endless 
deluge, and to bear the responsibility of establish- 
[166] 



The Immortality of Goodness 

ing a new and better race upon the flood-swept 
earth, — before these things all human skill and 
knowledge, and all human endurance must have 
failed. But Noah had that goodness which is 
the highest wisdom, that faith which is invincible 
might, and he rode secure and unperturbed as 
the babe Moses would later ride in his ark of 
bulrushes upon the Nile. Came forty days of 
rain; then one hundred and fifty days until 
Ararat appeared; then two and a half months 
until still other peaks appeared; then three 
months more and birds failing to return show the 
water dried from off the face of the land ; then two 
months more, and the God who shut him in, opens 
the door, and Noah, true to the dominating im- 
pulse of his life, builded an altar unto the Lord 
and offered burnt sacrifices upon it. The smoke of 
that sacrifice was seen of no human eyes, save 
those of Noah and his family. He had prevailed 
over the powers of hate and ridicule and flood. 
His enemies were dead. The rainbow spanned the 
sky. He, and his sons, and their wives, alone were 
left alive. 

And the last enemy which he must meet was 
death. It came to him as it comes to all men, and 
it would not be denied. Yet in dying Noah 
triumphed over death. He is the first of all the 
Old Testament saints to really conquer his 
environment. Abel protested and was slain. 
Enoch, of whom his generation was unworthy, 
was translated that he might not see death. 
Noah saw his generation conquered while he yet 
lived, and passing through that dark and com- 
[167] 



The Substance of Happiness 



mon portal which awaits us all, he left behind 
memories as immortal as his own soul. The cen- 
turies pass and Ezekiel prophesying to his apos- 
tate countrymen portrays their iniquity by 
placing it in contrast with the righteousness of 
Noah. The centuries pass, and our Lord proph- 
esying his own second coming, refers to Noah 
and the generations which he condemned. Peter, 
in each of his epistles, drawn irresistibly — man 
of instability that he himself had been — to the 
calm unwavering strength and fidelity of Noah, 
writes of that deathless patriarch. The author 
of Hebrews places him third in the great muster- 
roll of God's heroes. And because his life is 
enshrined in a deathless Book, a Book destined 
to be known to all men everywhere, his influence 
widens with the passing years, and all earth's 
millions shall one day be stablished and strength- 
ened by it, even as we today. 

Let us lay to heart two lessons. First, Badness 
is mortality. Corruption is destruction. In the 
sixth chapter of Genesis corruption and destruc- 
tion are synonymous. The same word expresses 
corruption in verses eleven and twelve, and 
destruction in verse thirteen. Paul in the third 
chapter of first Corinthians uses one word for 
" defile " and " destroy." " If any man destroy 
the temple of God, him shall God destroy." 
Sin is death. Sinning is suicide. Sin is death's 
seedling. Death is sin's full fruit. 

And the second lesson is this: Goodness is 
immortality. The word " God " is a form of the 
word "good." Between "God" and "good" 
there is a true and indestructible affinity. All 
[168] 



The Immortality of Goodness 



goodness is a part of the eternal order, a very- 
word of God, and it is deathless, because God 
cannot be slain. If, therefore, corruption is 
destruction, and if goodness is immortality, let 
us be good, and let us do good! The world is 
ruled by the dead. It is Jesus and Paul who rule 
our hearts. It is Plato and Darwin and Milton 
and Shakespeare and Calvin who rule our minds, 
and in ways more intimate and tender the touch 
of the vanished hand and the sound of the stilled 
voice convey constraining motives to us all. And 
soon we shall be the dead. Soon our influence shall 
be projected on the lives of generations yet to be. 

" If you and I to-day 
Should stop and lay 

Our life-work down, and let our hands fall where they will — 
Fall down and lie quite still; 

And if some other hand should come, and stoop to find 
The threads we carried, so that it could wind, 
Beginning where we stopped; if it should come to keep 
Our life-work going; seek 
To carry on the good design 
Distinctively made yours, or mine, 
What would it find? " 

Let us put heart into others. Let us as parents 
attain our highest spiritual possibilities and then 
pour ourselves without stint into our children. 
Let us as teachers, inspired by memories of an 
Agassiz, a Hopkins, a Porter, a Mary Lyon, and 
realizing our superb opportunities to multiply 
any goodness we possess in the lives of those we 
teach, dedicate ourselves anew to our incompar- 
able profession. Let the man of wealth transmute 
it into transformed lives, discharging his steward- 
[169] 



The Substance of Happiness 



ship in the fear of God. And let us all remember 
that while all sin and selfishness carries within 
it the seed of its own destruction, " There shall 
never be one lost good." The acorn strewn upon 
the lea will grow an oak to shade the aged in the 
heat of noon, to bless young love's tryst at even- 
tide. The spring you cleanse will cool ten thousand 
parched tongues, and save some ebbing life. The 
word of cheer you whisper to a soul o'erborne 
will raise it from the dust and save it from eternal 
death. Every good deed and every helpful 
word shall grow mighty with the rolling centuries 
to the end of time. For the world passeth away 
and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will 
of God, abideth, yea, abideth and increaseth, 
forever. 



[170] 



XI 

GRAY HAIRS 



[171] 



" Gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he 
knoweth not. 11 — Hosea 7: 9. 



[172] 



XI 



GRAY HAIRS 

OUR text is the prophet's description of a politi- 
cal situation. Leaving the isolation of its 
youth, the tribe of Ephraim is taking its place 
among the nations. But without that unswerving 
devotion to Jehovah which might insure national 
strength, it is losing, and not, as its leaders imagine, 
gaining power. Already the oppression of the 
fatherless and the widow, and that corruption 
of morals which is the early fruit of idolatry calls 
forth the solemn warning of the prophet. " Eph- 
raim — among the nations he mingleth himself " 
— scattering the priceless wheat of his nationalism 
among the tares of an alien soil — " strangers 
have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it 
not. Yea, gray hairs are here and there upon 
him, yet he knoweth not." 

Leaving aside the historical significance of the 
text, let it speak to us of spiritual decadence in 
the individual. First, we are reminded that this 
is gradual, and always so. A single night of pain 
or danger may whiten a man's head, but spiritual 
decay is never swift. So has it been from the 
beginning. Eve listened long to a tempter who 
found her weak point on the side of her ambition. 
[173] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 



" Thy husband is strong and beautiful. Thy 
garden is fair with fruit and flowers. But 
why are thy singing rivers set for boundaries? 
Why should'st thou be denied thy heart's desire? 
The fruit of the tree toward which thou yearnest, 
is it not denied thee, lest thou, so wise even now, 
should become as wise as God Himself? After 
long persuasion Eve yields, and is led into extrav- 
agance in its literal sense, for the word means 
" wandering beyond." Reading the story of 
mighty Joab we find him for many years devoted 
to the king. He scales the stronghold of the 
Jebusites. He fights furiously at Rabbah, but 
delays the final victory until David can come up 
and claim it as his own. He refuses to be led away 
in Absalom's rebellion. Yet, when stung by a 
jealousy cruel as the grave, it works his undoing. 
He slays Amasa, who has been placed in authority 
over him; takes a lying census with intent to 
deceive the king; finally joins with Adonijah in 
rebellion — and the long story of moral disin- 
tegration is condensed to a line : " Joab had turned 
after Adonijah, though he turned not after Absa- 
lom." As in the moral life of communities evil 
works always, while reform works at intervals, 
so in the life of the individual. The incessant 
labor of defense wearies. We grow acquiescent. 
Like the slow gray flakes at evening of a winter 
day, unnoted until morning shows a world of 
white beneath the drifts, the gray hairs of 
spiritual senility softly creep upon us. 

Of moral decline we are largely unconscious. 
Ephraim, losing his vitality, was quite unaware 
[174] 



Gray H air s 



of his condition. Indeed he thought himself 
adding strength to strength. " Strangers have 
devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not." 
And when we say this we point out one striking 
phase of sin. It knoweth not itself. An old 
writer says, "It is the plague of many that they 
are not plagued: even this is their punishment, 
the want of punishment. An insensible heart is 
the devil's anvil, he fashioneth all sins on it, and 
the blows are not felt." Oscar Wilde has told 
us in stabbing verse, that it was not the criminal 
doomed to hang at sunrise who lay all night in 
staring wakefulness, but his fellow-prisoners 
guilty of lesser crimes: 

" He lay as one who lies and dreams 

In a pleasant meadow land, 
The watchers watched him as he slept, 

And could not understand 
How one could sleep so sweet a sleep 

With the hangman close at hand. 

" But there is no sleep when men must weep 

Who never yet have wept: 
So we — the fool, the fraud, the knave — 

That endless vigil kept, 
And through each brain on hands of pain 

Another's terror crept. 

"Alas! It is a fearful thing 
To feel another's guilt. 
For, right within, the sword of Sin 
Pierced to its poisoned hilt, 
And as molten lead were the tears we shed 
For the blood we had not split." 

And was it not because man in his sin could never 
know his sin that Christ was made sin for him? 
Beholding with the far-fathoming eye of prophecy 
[175] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

and crying aloud from flame-cleansed lips Isaiah 
said of the coming Messiah: " He was numbered 
with the transgressors. " The men of Christ's 
own time — scribes, Pharisees — good men many 
of them, as men go, brought Isaiah's prophecy 
to pass. Even Jesus numbered Himself among 
the transgressors, for where was any furtive 
Zaccheus, any shame-soiled Magdalen, any cal- 
loused soldier, any soul borne down of sin for 
whom he had no brother's tenderness? The 
formal, despairing of his informality, declared in 
bewilderment and growing hate, " This man 
receiveth sinners!" But the converse was equally 
true. Sinners received this Man. Sinners re- 
ceived this Man because He knew their sin and 
sorrow as they could not know them, and over 
His flooding pity they found an open channel to 
his heart. And God, too, numbered Him with the 
transgressors. " It hath pleased the Lord to 
bruise him; he hath put him to grief." Here is 
one who was innocent; who knew himself to be 
innocent; whom God knew to be innocent, yet 
strung up like a common criminal upon a cross 
of wood, and at last, as the wounded head sinks 
down upon the breast, moaning in a great per- 
plexity of despair, " My God, why hast thou 
forsaken me?" Why, indeed! Does it not all 
emphasize in blood-red italics this: That sin is 
to itself insensible, that only sinlessness is sensi- 
ble of sin, that until the Son of God in agony and 
shame portrayed sin in its most terrible eventua- 
tion, the world could not know its inwardness, 
nor be turned from it unto righteousness? God 
[176] 



Gray Hairs 



" made Him to be sin who knew no sin, that we 
might be made the righteousness of God." 

But if spiritual decline comes slowly, and 
gradually, we come to know it swiftly, in some hour 
of revelation. The knowledge that we are growing 
old always comes with a little shock. There is a 
definite moment in each of our lives when the 
consciousness of waxing age startles us. There 
is an hour when, in the light of that knowledge, 
we must undertake a certain readjustment to our 
world. You have been very busy, thinking little 
of the flight of time. One day your daughter 
who fondly strokes your head declares, " Father, 
I do believe I see a gray hair!" She brings the 
mirror. You can see for yourself. Sure enough, 
they are there. Not one, but everywhere like 
silver threads! " Gray hairs here and there, yet 
he knew it not." 

So it is with our backslidings. We have been 
troubled about many things. We have been 
absorbed in wide activities. We have been deaf 
to many voices of constraining love. Then, 
suddenly, after many days, some word comes 
piercing consciousness, and we awake. " Will 
ye also go away," said Jesus, after he had 
watched the wavering disciples, and then they 
. knew how near to them disloyalty had crept. 
" Ephraim is wedded to his idols; let him alone," 
Hosea said, and then Ephraim knew how great 
was his defection. The voices which reveal us 
to ourselves are many. Sometimes the civil 
law, defied, evaded, thwarted for years, lays 
hold of a man who then realizes for the first time 
[177] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

the fullness of his inquity. Sometimes a great 
love flashes from soul to soul in revealing power. 
" When I try to fancy myself an infidel/ ' said 
John Randolph, " I feel my mother's hand upon 
my head, and her voice in my ear, as she taught 
me to say, ' Our Father, which art in Heaven. 7 " 
One night a girl of the London streets stood in 
a doorway when a worker from the West London 
Mission offered her a flower and said: " This is 
the last one I have. Would you like it?" She 
took the flower and said: " It's six years since I 
was given a flower." Then she added, " It's 
six years since a good woman spoke to me." 
The mission worker passed on. Months after- 
ward she learned what had transpired. The 
girl retired to her lodgings, placed the flower in 
water, and slept. Waking, it was the first object 
she saw. As she looked at it, one thought slowly 
filled her mind, — it was white ! Her mind sur- 
rendered itself utterly to the one idea of white- 
ness. Then the inevitable contrast flashed upon 
her, — the contrast between a white flower and 
a black life! She went again into the streets as 
of old, but the white flower went with her, pitying 
her misery, breathing love upon her shame. 
Always with its purity and fragrance mingled the 
purity and loving kindness of the giver, and at 
last, with a great cry, like the cry of the wayward 
boy in the parable, she sought out " the angel of 
the mission," and surrendered herself to God. 
Followed months in which this one, suddenly 
recalled to purity by that fragile bloom which 
Love held out to her, found impulse deepening to 
[178] 



Gr ay H air s 

moral victory, until at last, with a body purified, 
a mind ennobled, and a life transformed by the 
Cross of Christ beyond all power of lust to drag 
her down again to the pit, she passed into the 
ranks of London's toilers, wearing the white 
flower of blamelessness, and bearing as a benedic- 
tion, her Master's word: " Go, and sin no more." 

But the deep revelation of ourselves to our- 
selves comes as we fix our eyes on Calvary. I 
walk with the bare-bosomed night beneath an 
undimmed moon, and the light includes me as 
it falls upon the throbbing city, the murmurous 
forest, the far-flung countryside — a world so 
vast and populous that in the midst of it I am 
nothing. If I walk to the shore of a lake, there, 
straight as an arrow's flight, the moonlight cleaves 
a path across the flood to me alone! Religion 
viewed abstractly cannot be otherwise than im- 
personal. So long as it suggests mere history, 
theology, ritual, controversy, churches, charities, 
and statistics, it never grips my heart. But let 
me stand in honest contemplation of the Cross, 
and lo! its shadow falls on me alone of all the 
world. And out of the shadow comes a voice. 
It speaks no generalities; it has no tale of others' 
failings, but it tells of sin — my sin. And I 
never hear that story as it is, save from the 
shadow of the Cross. We wonder often, why our 
sense of sin is dull. It is because flagrant crimes 
are as far from us as east from west; we have no 
temptation to commit them. And of our other 
sins we are unaware, because we do not listen 
at the Cross. Listen! " For your sake I became 
[179] 



The Substance of Happiness 

poor; you make haste to be rich. I walked in 
a splendid dignity of poverty; you seek to appear 
rich before the eyes of men. I was a friend of all 
the world, I loved the publican and the thief, 
but I loved the rich young man no less; and you, 
when you make a feast, ask only those who will 
ask you in return. I comforted; you pass by 
on the other side. I gave; you take. I sacri- 
ficed, even unto death; you forget my command- 
ment: ' If any man will be my disciple, let him 
deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow 
me.' I flamed against evil; you are lukewarm 
and silent. I did only the things which were 
pleasing to my Father; you by thought and word 
and deed reveal your long defection. I was 
tender; you are harsh. I was patient; you are 
irritable. I saw in every child of earth a brother 
for whose soul I gladly died; you, O loveless one, 
are as sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal." 
Where is a man who will hold himself before the 
mirror of the Cross, and never say, " Yea, gray 
hairs are here and there upon me, and I knew 
it not." What man is there who will face that 
Cross, gathering up as it does, into one supreme 
heroic agony, the perfection and the vicariousness 
of Christ's whole life, and never say " God be 
merciful to me, a sinner"? 

The effect of the revelation differs. Sometimes 
it disheartens. Matthew Arnold's father was the 
famous Arnold of Rugby, in whose life religion 
was the dominant force, the life of life. He 
was a living epistle, known and read of his own, 
and many another man's son. But Matthew 
[180] 



Gray Hairs 

Arnold could look out across the tranquil bay at 
Dover Beach and write: 

"The world which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
So various, so beautiful, so new, 
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 
And we are here as on a darkling plain 
Swept with confus'd alarms of struggle and flight, 
Where ignorant armies clash by night." 

If the spiritual biography of the author could be 
written truly, surely, beneath the depression of 
these lines there would be found a deep sense 
of moral failure and discouragement. An achiev- 
ing spiritual life is never pessimistic. The spirit 
of that life which conquers the things of time 
and the flesh, is a spirit of unconscious uncon- 
querable optimism. Its God is a spirit, infinite, 
eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, 
power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. 
But the story of that great army, whose names 
are on the church books, but who seldom answer 
to the muster-roll, who wage no battles for the 
King, and who are so perilously near desertion, 
is a story of the disheartened. They enlisted with 
high hope; they sang, " I love Thy Kingdom, 
Lord"; they loved to repeat, " The Lord is my 
Shepherd. ... he restore th my soul," but 
gradually and unconsciously they allowed them- 
selves to fall beyond the sphere of that restoring. 
Once and again the vision of the Cross revealed 
them to themselves but they gave no sign, until 
at last the nerve of effort lay unthrilled. Dis- 
[181] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

couraged, disheartened, spiritual ambition dead, 
they bivouac with the great ecclesiastical army 
of the unemployed. 

But to tens of thousands the revelation is the 
first step in restoration. So it was with David, 
with Isaiah, with the Prodigal Son, and with 
Peter. If the spiritual decline of Peter was a 
slow process, it was probably the only slow process 
in all his life! In the flash of his Master's look he 
saw himself a traitor. He rushed out to weep, 
but also to repent. He knew his separation 
from the Lord was not final. Do we not all know 
when we part from those we love deeply, whether 
at the corner of a street, or at the grave, that we 
shall meet again? And when the time of meeting 
came Peter was ready. " Lovest thou me? 
Then feed my sheep," and Peter went out, no 
longer a hireling, but a true shepherd of the sheep, 
and lo! the fold he builded has become a church 

— a church so strong that hell itself may not 
prevail against it. So with each of us. If we have 
met the world, and still keep the faith — if we 
are still believing, praying, sacrificing Christians 

— it is because, revealed to ourselves again and 
again, we have not been utterly cast down, but 
rather, counting ourselves not to have appre- 
hended, and forgetting those things that are 
behind, and reaching forth unto those things 
which are before, we press toward the mark 
for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus. 

Because spiritual decline comes slowly, and 
while we are unaware, let us examine ourselves. 
[182] 



Gray H air s 



We must get the facts. We must face the facts. 
The way in which we face the facts will determine 
the stuff we are made of — it will determine 
destiny. Paul, revealed to himself, blind and 
shaken on the Damascus road, can cry " Lord 
what wilt thou have me to do?" Felix, revealed 
to himself, trembling like the aspen in the winds 
of spring, can only say, " Go thy way for this 
time, when I have a more convenient season, I 
will send for thee again." Will you flee the 
facts, like Felix? Or will you face the facts like 
Paul? We must face the facts. We must be men. 
We must not be disheartened. Like Paul Jones, 
when through that grim duel of the seas the 
cry of the enemy came, " Have you struck 
your colors?" we must answer, even though it 
be from a sadly battered deck, " I have not yet 
begun to fight!" But let us not forget, as we 
nerve our wills with battle-figures, that it is 
God who must receive us; God who must forgive 
us; God who must empower us; God who must 
make us finally triumphant — let us remember 
rather Hosea's last word to Ephraim. " Repent, 
and return, O thou fatherless, to thy Father. 
He will abundantly pardon. He will heal thy 
backsliding. He will love thee freely." 



[183] 



XII 

AS AN EAGLE — SO THE LORD 



[185] 



" As an eagle stirreth up her nest, flutter eth over her 
young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, bear- 
eth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead him, 
and there was no strange God with him" 

— Deut. 32: 11, 12. 



[186] 



XII 



AS AN EAGLE — SO THE LORD 

THE immediate reference of the text is to 
Israel and the exodus. As the eagle tempts 
the eaglet from its nest to dare the skies, so the 
Lord led Israel from Egypt up to ampler destinies. 
" He found him, " says Moses, and the words 
break into the rhythm of emotion: 

" He found him in a desert land, 

And in the waste howling wilderness; 

He compassed him about, he cared for him, 

He kept him as the apple of his eye : 

As an eagle that stirreth up her nest, 

That fluttereth over her young, 

He spread abroad his pinions, he took them, 

He bare them on his pinions : 

Jehovah alone did lead him, 

And there was no strange God with him." 

As we scan the words for helpful truth in our own 
circumstances two principal ideas appear. 

First, there is the idea of development. Life 
is a growth, a going on from more to more, a 
change from glory unto glory, even as by the 
spirit of the Lord. We try our wings today 
that we may fly tomorrow; we fly tomorrow that 
we may cleave the uttermost skies at last, and 
rush with clanging wings upon the sun. The 
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The Substance of Happiness 

thought that life may be a constant unfolding 
into a higher perfection is latent in the nature 
parables of Jesus. It is patent in Peter's " Grow 
in grace " and in Paul's " Forgetting the things 
which are behind, and stretching forward to the 
things which are before, I press on toward the 
goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in 
Jesus Christ." The whole trend of the Scripture 
supports these specific instances. From the first 
dim glimmerings of redemption in Genesis, to the 
last vision of the Apocalypse where we behold, 
not a completed city, but a city still descending 
out of heaven upon the earth; not a conquest 
finished, but a Captain riding forth conquering 
and to conquer; not a kingdom established, but 
a time to come when the kingdoms of this earth 
shall have become the Kingdom of the Lord and 
of his Christ, the voice of patriarch, and prophet, 
and priest, and Saviour, and apostle, and mar- 
tyr are calling us from some low-vaulted past, 
onward to a loftier future. To miss the 
meaning of development in life is to miss the 
meaning of life. We cannot do today's task unless 
we see tomorrow's. We cannot interpret any 
event unless we see — though it be but dimly — 
that today's event links with all events of time. 
Without development as a motive and an inspira- 
tion we lose the key wherewith we might have 
opened wide the sealed eternities. 

How does God secure development? The 
first answer of the text is the word " fluttereth." 
When the young bird is old enough to fly the 
mother eagle moves over and under and around 
[188] 



As an Eagle — So the Lord 

the nest that the fledgling may be led to imitate 
the beating of her wings. So for our higher 
attainment we are given patterns, models, ideals 
of character greater than our own. To little 
children parents are the great exemplars. As 
the expanding mind pushes research beyond the 
fireside an Abraham, a Moses, a Joshua, a Lin- 
coln, a Washington, a William of Orange wait 
to guide and inspire. The Emperor Marcus 
Aurelius devoted an entire book to a grateful 
consideration of all that he owed to those who 
influenced his youth. " The example of my 
grandfather, Verus, gave me a good disposition, 
not prone to anger. By the recollection of my 
father's character I learned to be both modest 
and manly. My mother taught me to have 
regard for religion, to be generous and open- 
handed. The philosopher, Sextus, recommended 
good humor to me. Alexander, the grammarian, 
taught me not to be fmically critical about words. 
I learned from Catulus not to slight a friend for 
making a remonstrance." We may smile at 
ardent hero-worship, but the youth who has no 
capacity for it has no capacity for growth in 
character. No one may be higher than self until 
he sees higher than self. One who is so self- 
sufficient that he cannot thrill to the contact of 
colossal character lacks the first possibility of 
progress. And God, who knew our need and 
hunger for an ideal which should be flawless 
when growing discernment shows the imper- 
fections of earth's greatest sons, gave his own 
Son — as babe and youth, and teacher, and 
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The Substance of Happiness 

sacrifice, and victor over death — that hero- 
worship might grow to God- worship, ideal flash- 
ing into Deity as we see the truth at last, and cry 
with Thomas: " My Lord and my God!" 

How does God secure development? The 
second answer of the text is the word " stirreth." 
The eagle has fluttered over the nest, but the 
eaglet is unmoved. The power of example is 
inadequate. Sterner methods are required. Then 
she darts upon the nest with beak and talon. 
She tears away the sides until the old sense of 
security is wanting. She stirs the bottom, so 
long smooth and grateful to half-feathered flesh, 
until it stabs. The same love which made the 
nest now destroys it, lest it be a prison where the 
eagle birth-right is forgotten. 

" As an eagle — so the Lord." Such was His 
method with the children of Israel. They had 
entered the fat lands of Goshen when famine- 
stricken in their own, and with growing flocks 
and herds they lived in great content. And then 
God began to stir the nest. There arose up a 
new king who knew not Joseph. Under the 
lash of cruel task-masters Israel must dig canals, 
build treasure city and pyramid, and finally 
make bricks without straw. Meanwhile, yonder 
in the desert of Midian the man Moses had long 
since found a comfortable nest. The son of a 
wealthy father-in-law, he keeps the great flocks 
in the silent hills where peace and safety and 
nature's wild beauty fill the round of days. None 
knew better than he : 



[190] 



As an Eagle — So the Lord 

" How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! " 

Then suddenly one day as he dreamed at Horeb 
he beheld a bush that burned and was not con- 
sumed. From it spoke a Voice: " The cry of 
the children of Israel is come unto me; I have 
seen their oppression and thou shalt bring them 
forth from Egypt. " In panic before a task beyond 
his powers, Moses frantically begins to make all 
possible excuse. " I have forgotten the wisdom 
of Pharaoh's court. I have forgotten state-craft 
and the ways of men. Behold! thy servant is 
little better than the sheep he tends." But for 
each evasion God has a reply, divinely wise, 
divinely patient, and from that hour Moses 
knows no rest. " Thou shalt lead my people," 
the Voice had said, and now the world became a 
sounding-board from which it echoed ceaselessly 
to his unwilling ears. It sang in the flow of the 
water-brooks. It trembled in the bleat of the 
sheep. The noon-day suns proclaimed it. It 
stood in flaming stars upon the midnight sky, 
until Moses, driven from his nest by a Divine 
compulsion, went down to meet a people whose 
nest was now a torture, and together they set 
their feet upon the paths of destiny. God had 
shepherds enough and needed a leader of men; 
the world was full of slaves and He needed a 
nation of free men to give law and literature, and 
in His good time, a Saviour to mankind. Because 
of this He stirred the nests of a man and a people 
with the bared arm of His omnipotent power 
that fledglings might grow to be eagles, the man 
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The Substance of Happiness 

an immortal law-giver, the people the supreme 
benefactors of mankind. 

So it was with our forefathers. Green, merry 
England, what comfortable nests were there! 
But persecution arose. God stirred the nest. 
First came the flight to Amsterdam. But here 
was religious controversy. God stirred the nest. 
Then came the flight to Ley den. But here, if 
they would stay, they must lose their nationality. 
Again God stirred the nest and at last they took 
wing for the long Atlantic flight. Sweet were 
the fields of England, and Holland very fair! But 
there were sleek, smug English squires aplenty, 
and God had need of men who, as they moved 
forward to the founding of a mighty state and 
their crown of immortality, could face undaunted 
the wild, wide ocean, the savage beasts and 
still more savage men beyond. 

And so it is with us. There are periods in our 
lives when the nest is so comfortable that leaving 
it is unthinkable. We have health, wealth, 
friends, and loved ones. Then God stirs the nest. 
Health goes, and the fair palace of ambition falls 
about our ears in ruin. Wealth goes, and with 
it many who had called us friend. Loved ones 
are taken and as the clods crash down upon the 
coffin-lid we stand amid the wrecks of matter 
and the crush of worlds. We seek for the inscru- 
table meaning of such changes, reversals, sunder- 
ing of old ties, and then the text makes answer. 
Perhaps health goes, that we may know how 
fragile this human frame is, and how little hu- 
man strength may do without the strength of God. 
[192] 



As an Eagle — So the Lord 

Perhaps wealth goes, in order that before our 
souls shall be required of us, we may know that 
man's life consisteth not in the abundance of 
things which he possesseth. Perhaps loved ones 
go, that we may turn again to that love which 
sent our Lord from throne to manger, and along 
the stony byways of the world until it drove Him 
to His cross, a love whose breadth and length, 
and height and depth passeth knowledge, a love 
which, even imperfectly comprehended, filleth 
us with the fullness of Almighty God. 

A financial panic sweeps the land. Depositors, 
terror-stricken, withdraw deposits. Bankers, fear- 
ful of disaster, call in all available assets. As 
through an opened artery the human body 
bleeds to death, so by this withdrawal of the very 
life-blood of finance the body of business lies 
dying. A man comes home at nightfall, and 
throwing himself down before a table, buries 
his face in his hands. " The bank suspended 
payment today," he says, " and all is lost." 
And then his little daughter steals close to him, 
thrusts her head up between his arms until her 
cheek is close against his, and says: " Papa, I 
am left." And his wife comes and lifts him up 
and puts both arms around his neck, and as his 
eyes search hers, he sees there the old look of 
their early married life — loved long since, and 
lost awhile — and then she says: " My husband, 
I am left." And then the aged mother, her face 
serene with deathless faith, speaks from her 
corner: " My son, the promises of God are left." 
All lost! Nay, rather all found! All had been 
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The Substance of Happiness 

lost — child-love, wife-love, God-love — but now 
as wealth took wings the scales fell, and for the 
first time in many a fevered year he gazed again 
upon reality. " As an eagle stirreth up her nest, 
so the Lord did lead him.'' 

But while we think of development, and God's 
methods of securing it, we must not ignore the 
second principal idea of the text, which is pro- 
tection. It is a protection over development. 
"As an eagle . . . beareth them on her 
wings/' The mother has flown about the nest 
to incite by example; she has torn the nest in 
loving compulsion until, at last, the fledgling 
lifts unsteady wings in flight. But soon he wearies, 
becomes giddy, is in danger of falling. Then 
suddenly she wheels below to reassure him, and 
if need be, to bear his weight. 

So in Israel's long flight from Egypt God never 
left him for an instant. The Red Sea bars the 
way, with Pharaoh's chariots and horsemen close 
behind; God opens a path and they pass through 
dry shod. They hunger in a waste howling 
wilderness; He sends manna from the skies. 
They murmur for meat; He fills the camp with 
quail. They thirst by Marah's bitter water; 
He sweetens it for their use. They thirst at Horeb ; 
He sends water from the smitten rock. Moses, 
bereft of Miriam and Aaron, fails and dies on 
Nebo; He gives the mighty Joshua. They stand 
impotent before the frowning walls of Jericho; 
by a miracle of omnipotence He delivers the city 
to their hands. 

In like manner He deals with us. Sometimes 
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As an Eagle — So the Lord 

luring, sometimes compelling, He nerves us to 
high adventure, but when our strength falters 
He is close beside. Never doing for us what we 
may do for ourselves, He sustains us in the hour 
of failure. The Red Sea opens, but Israel must 
walk through. Paul had a thorn in the flesh, 
without which he had soared so high he had been 
hidden from our sight. God would not take it 
from him, but He taught him to endure it 
and to know " My grace is sufficient for thee." 
God bids us fly, and when the wings grow numb 
with labor and the heart cold with fear He teaches 
us the meaning of His word : "lama very present 
help in time of trouble. I will never leave thee 
nor forsake thee." 

The traveler standing on the rim of the Grand 
Canyon of the Yellowstone sees a waterfall 
" clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful," 
in a stupendous plunge twice greater than Niag- 
ara's, and listens to its reverberations, as, rising 
and falling with the fickle wind they chant for- 
ever the one word — " God." He sees the river 
as it winds, a ribbon of jade-green, through the 
abysmal chasm at his feet, and then his gaze 
sweeps up those canyon walls. It is a wild welter 
of hues — crimson and emerald, ochre and co- 
balt, honey-splashed-with-wine, snow-white, silver- 
gray, bright yellow and vermilion — all blending 
in a master-piece of perfect harmony. In the 
wide washes of color, form is not wanting, for 
the Great Sculptor, with chisels of rain and frost 
and wind and riving lightnings has wrought cities 
and cemeteries; palaces and castles; huge faces 
[195] 



The Substance of Happiness 

of men and women; huge columns like commemo- 
rative monoliths for dead kings. But the eye 
must seek relief, and as it turns to the skies, 
behold! high, high above, an eagle, scarce visible 
in space, wheels upon unmoving wing. Seen from 
that height how appalling must be the gorge 
which fills mankind with awe. Faint with a 
sudden giddiness the traveler clutches at the 
rail in front. And then the thought comes: 
Once yonder eagle was a flaccid fledgling in a nest, 
with no strength nor knowledge nor desire. 
Through the long golden days he lay inert, 
nerveless, his only movement a wide opening of 
the silly mouth to engulf his food. But the 
parent-eagle wheeled above and around him; 
she flew upon the nest; she drove him forth with 
cries, then placed her wing beneath him in the 
empty spaces of the ether. And now, because of 
her, he soars a monarch of the air; a king all- 
glorious in his mighty canyon-kingdom of the 
west. 

And as that mother eagle, so the Lord. So 
He lures us by example; so He lifts us by love's 
compulsion; so at last our leaden feet spurn 
earth and we set wings against the blue empyrean 
of destiny, while His wing beats beneath — His 
unswerving love, perfect in wisdom and power 
through every moment of time and of eternity, 
holding lest we fall. Tell me, where can you find 
a view of life like this save in this Book? What 
old philosophy or modern fad will show it you as 
a training school in which great characters and 
great calamity alike are school-masters to bring 
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As an Eagle — So the Lord 



us to God's truth, and where God Himself helps 
us learn each lesson which He sets? What splen- 
dor of conception! What glory of inspiration! 
What ocean depth of confidence is here! How 
it fills the day with winging aspiration and in the 
night of sorrow how it chants upon the ear of 
faith : 

" Tis true, He now thy strength doth try, 
Like birds that teach their young to fly; 
But when thou sinkest, He will bring, 
Beneath thy fall, His own great wing." 

God help us to aspire! God help us to grow! 
God help us to trust! 



197] 



XIII 

THE GOODNESS OF THE IMMORTAL 



[199] 



" Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, 
even these least, ye did it unto me. 11 

—Matthew 25: 40 (R.V.) 



[200] 



XIII 



THE GOODNESS OF THE IMMORTAL 

THE text gains significance from its setting. 
It is part of a passage in which Jesus por- 
trays phases of that final judgment from which 
the wicked shall pass into punishment, and the 
righteous into everlasting peace. For the Jew 
of the period this passage would have peculiar 
significance, because the idea of the judgment — 
an idea which was by no means unfamiliar to 
him or to his forefathers — had become dis- 
torted, as so often happens when the attempt is 
made to give to a transcendent fact a local habi- 
tation and a name. These words of Jesus, if 
his hearers were able to receive them, would 
serve as a corrective. They believed that the 
great gorge of Jehoshaphat, on the east of Jeru- 
salem, would be miraculously widened at the 
judgment day to accommodate all humanity, 
and that the great assize would there be held. 
The righteous would receive the reward of the 
righteous, but the wicked would pass into punish- 
ment in the gorge of Hinnom, or Gehenna, where 
babes had formerly been sacrificed to Moloch, 
and where now the refuse of Jerusalem was 
burned. Some held that the wicked would be 
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The Substance of Happiness 

annihilated in Gehenna; some that they would 
continue to exist there forever; some that they 
would " moan for a season/' and then emerge; 
some that they would expiate their sins until 
Messiah should set them free at His second com- 
ing; some that the wicked and Gehenna together 
would finally be destroyed. One school of rabbis 
taught that at the judgment the outer sheath of 
the sun would be cast off, and the world be swept 
by lambent fire which would consume the wicked, 
but from which the good would arise cleansed 
and immortalized by the bath of flame. All 
agreed that the righteous would pass into peace, 
but the fate of the wicked was a theme to provoke 
the widest, the most intolerant, and the most 
impassioned differences. Moreover, it would 
seem that, in general, " the righteous " meant 
" the Jewish " while the word " unrighteous " 
expressed the current conception of the Gentile 
world. 

But the judgment has a universal significance. 
" Every one of us shall give account of himself 
unto God." Let us note some of its features as 
Jesus reveals them upon this, the occasion of 
His last public appearance as a teacher. He will 
come in his glory, the face once so marred more 
than any man, now glowing with celestial light; 
the form once distorted in the agony of the Cross, 
now the very form of God; and, though sur- 
rounded by the angelic host, He is still the fairest 
of ten thousand, and the altogether lovely. All 
that divinity which He had claimed for Himself, 
and all the moral beauty of that truth which He 
[202] 



The Goodness of the Immortal 

had declared, and all the glory of that Kingdom 
which He prophesied with such astounding assur- 
ance, is now embodied in Him, and flashes forth 
to fill the hungry souls of those who have long- 
ingly waited for His coming. Once He had stood 
captive and condemned before an earthly throne; 
now He sits in majesty and power upon His 
throne of glory. Once the blinded nations slew 
Him; now they must be judged of His judg- 
ment. He shall separate the inhabitants of earth 
as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats, 
a task in no way difficult. For as the shepherd 
of Palestine folding his mixed flock at eventide 
finds the sheep and goats dividing almost with- 
out his intervention, each after his own kind, so 
will the Judge of all the earth find good men and 
evil falling apart, each into his own place. And 
now it is the King, and no longer the Son of Man 
who speaks. His word is " Come ye blessed of 
my father, inherit " — a family word. God's 
great family shall now receive the great and final 
token of His love. Inherit the kingdom prepared, 
— not decreed in haste, not evolved through 
some blind outworking of passionless Fate, but 
fashioned by God the Father, in loving care for 
the needs of his beloved, from the foundation of 
the world. These, He says, are thus rewarded 
because they ministered to His needs, through 
their ministry to the needs of their fellow-men; 
while those who are denied their portion in 
the kingdom are denied because they have failed 
to minister to Him in ministering to the needs of 
their fellows. Then follows that strange debate 
[203] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

between the Judge and these two classes which 
have been cleft apart by His swift decree. The 
righteous cannot understand why their deeds 
have won such commendation, and the un- 
righteous cannot understand how they have 
incurred such condemnation. The one group is 
as genuinely amazed at the ascription of merit 
as the other at the sentence of demerit. Then 
the passage sweeps swiftly forward to close upon 
that sustained note of finality and independence 
of human opinion, " These shall go away into 
eternal punishment: but the righteous into 
eternal life." 

From this imperial setting let us lift our crown- 
jewel text. " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of 
these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto 
me." 

The first word of importance is ye. It refers 
to those who are blessed of their Father, who 
are set upon His right hand, who are to receive 
for their inheritance a kingdom prepared from 
the foundation of the world. The most striking 
thing about them is that they are unconscious 
of their goodness. They had not done favors to 
the rich 

" Where thrift may follow fawning," 

with forethought of reward. They had served 
the poor, expecting no return. " For I was an 
hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, 
and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye 
took me in; naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, 
and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came 
[204] ' 



The Goodness of the Immortal 

unto me." They had not been content with that 
charity which was customary, giving food to 
the hungry, drink to the thirsty, shelter to the 
stranger — ■ they had gone far beyond that. They 
had clothed the naked, visited the sick, and had 
even gone down into the filth and stench and 
contagion of the prisons, to comfort the felon 
and the outcast. Yet they are unaware of any 
extraordinary virtue in themselves, and their 
wondering comment is, " Lord, when saw we 
thee an hungered, and fed thee? or athirst, and 
gave thee drink? And when saw we thee a 
stranger, and took thee in? or naked and clothed 
thee? And when saw we thee sick, or in prison, 
and came unto thee?" 

Superlative goodness is always without self- 
consciousness. There are times, when, aware 
that some disagreeable task is in the line of our 
duty, we hesitate long, and finally, with a tre- 
mendous effort, succeed in performing it. Where- 
upon we are filled with an almost overpowering 
sense of our own goodness. Had we been greatly 
good, the task had not been greatly difficult! 
The truly good man is unconscious of it, because 
his good deeds require so little effort. The man 
who does his duty only before the sharp goads 
of conscience, or the stinging lash of public 
opinion is always conscious of more virtue than 
he has. The beginner at the piano picks out 
his notes and chords with painful iteration, but 
later he forgets the base mechanics of his art, and 
soars in raptures like the lark's heart's outburst. 
Often, entering church or cathedral or memorial 
[205] 



The Substance of Happiness 

hall, we find mottoes in Latin inscribed upon its 
walls, each of which, like Milton's good book, 
" Is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, 
treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life." 
Yet how seldom has the artisan who placed the 
mighty words there, been aware of their signifi- 
cance. He wrought them skillfully, giving form 
and color. Their truth he could not know. 

So the unconscious good write an autobi- 
ography day by day, which, when Christ shall 
read it at the judgment shall fall in immortal 
measures of beauty and wisdom from His lips. 
Wist Moses that his face shone as he came from 
Sinai's high communion? When she broke her 
alabaster box, did Mary know that the incense 
of her fame would fill the ages with unfailing 
perfume? Did Stephen know, as he broke the 
bread of charity to the widows of Jerusalem, that 
his humble service would lead to a mighty minis- 
try of the word? And was he aware, when he 
stood before the council, that those who beheld 
him saw his face as it had been the face of an 
angel? Did Savonarola know, as he defied 
Lorenzo, thundered out a new apocalypse, and 
met his final martyrdom unflinching, that his 
story would be deathless? Did John Knox know, 
when he scorned the craft of the courtier and 
braved the wrath of a queen, that his life would 
be woven into the texture of Scottish history? 
Did Francis of Assisi know, as he made Poverty 
his bride and toiled tirelessly among the wild 
hills of Umbria, or preached to the swallows of 
Alviano, or made nests for the doves of Sienna, 
[206] 



TheMoodness of the Immortal 

that he gave the ages a portrait of 'mmortal 
goodness? Telling of Lovejoy, that early martyr 
in the cause of abolition, thirty years after his 
death, Wendell Phillips spoke one of the great 
sentences of the language: " How cautiously 
men sink into nameless graves, while now and 
then one forgets himself into immortality." 

Our next important word is did. " Inasmuch 
as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even 
these least, ye did it unto me." When we have 
thus placed the emphasis we are immediately 
aware of the contrast between those who do, 
and those who do not. The " do-no ts " are those 
who are placed upon the left hand, who hear the 
sentence: " Depart from me, ye cursed, into the 
eternal fire which is perpared for the devil and his 
angels: for I was an hungered, and ye gave me 
no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in; naked, 
and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and 
ye visited me not." These have been guilty of 
no positive crime. " When saw we " — we of the 
blameless immaculate lives — " when saw we 
thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or 
naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister 
unto thee?" But the absence of good works, 
the absence of love, which declared the dominion 
of selfishness within, is enough to exclude them 
from the heaven of their Lord. 

All negative religion, all passive goodness, all 
self-righteous correctness of life, stands here, 
stripped and shivering in the winds of judgment. 
" The condemnation given from the judgment 
[207] 



The Substance of Happiness 



throne/ ' writes John Ruskin to a Bible class of 
young men," is all for the undones and not for 
the dones. People are perpetually afraid of 
doing wrong; but unless they are doing its reverse 
energetically, they are doing it all day long, and 
the degree does not matter." The great word of 
vital Christianity is not " abstain," but " per- 
form." Robert Browning wrote his poem, " The 
Statue and the Bust " to uphold the contention 
that it is better for a man to strive to an end, 
even an unlawful one, than to live forever dawdling 
and postponing: 

" Let a man contend to the uttermost 
For his life's set prize be it what it will! " 



" The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 
Is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin 
Tho' the end in sight was a vice." 

When our Lord condemned the Church of Lao- 
dicea, He said, " I know thy works, that thou art 
neither cold nor hot." If a man is cold, heat may 
transform him. If a man is positively, forcefully 
evil, that force may be reversed and thrown into 
channels of goodness. But if a man has been 
subject to heat and is still but half -hot, if there 
be neither force for evil nor for good within him, 
his case is hopeless. " I would thou wert cold or 
hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and 
neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my 
mouth." Thomas Hood tells in his " Lady's 
Dream " of a woman who saw in vision, the 
funeral of one who had died through her neglect, 
[208] 



The Goodness of the Immortal 



and the long procession of the sick and the starv- 
ing whom she might have helped: 

" And 0! those maidens young, 

Who wrought in that dreary room, 

With figures drooping and spectres thin 

And cheeks without a bloom ; — 

And the voice that cried, ' For the pomp of pride, 

We haste to an early tomb.' 

" For the blind and the cripple were there, 
And the babe that pined for bread, 
And the homeless man, and the widow poor 
Who begged — to bury the dead; 
The naked, alas ! that I might have clad, 
The famished I might have fed! 

And then the poet puts his message into four 
lines : 

"And yet it was never in my soul 
To play so ill a part; 
But evil is wrought by lack of thought, 
As well as want of heart! " 

We may always measure ourselves in two ways. 
One is the way of the Corinthians, concerning 
which Paul says, " But they, measuring them- 
selves by themselves, and comparing themselves 
among themselves, are not wise." We compare 
ourselves with those about us; we measure down. 
Counting the sins we actually commit: covet- 
eousness, anger, evil thoughts, selfishness, false- 
hoods, dishonesties, — and we seem to stand 
reasonably well. The other way is the high test, the 
test challenging the best that is in us. We come 
into the presence of Him who did no sin, neither was 
guile found in His mouth, and now we must 
[209] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

measure up. How far have we been changed into 
His likeness? What might we have been, and 
have failed to be? What good deeds might we 
have done, and have left undone? What life 
might we have lived, and have not lived? Woe 
unto them who never till the day of judgment 
wake to know that all difference between men is 
as nothing compared to the difference between 
all men and Christ! Woe unto him who never 
till the judgment day sees the mighty gulf be- 
tween himself and the man he ought to be! Woe 
unto him who can only murmur in the judgment 
day, " I have done no harm." Stones and trees 
might say as much! And the punishment is 
fitted to the sin; for it denies the heaven-splendor 
and the angel song and the comradeship pre- 
pared for saints, and gives instead the everlasting 
fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 

Now remains to be considered the last and 
most difficult part of a service the strange state- 
ment of our Lord that the text, rendered to " one 
of these my brethren, even these least," is rendered 
to Himself. Is the statement literal or figurative? 
And what does it mean? 

First there are what we may call the theo- 
logical interpretations. The good deed must 
be done by a professed believer in Christ, if it is 
to have merit in the eyes of God. Certain texts 
are given in proof: " He that receiveth a prophet 
in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's 
reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man 
in the name of a righteous man shall receive a 
righteous man's reward. And whosoever shall 
[210] 



The Goodness of the Immortal 

give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup 
of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, 
verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his 
reward.' ' Or, it is held that the good deed must 
be done in behalf of a professed disciple, to be 
of value. " For whosoever shall give you a 
cup of water to drink, because ye are Christ's, 
verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose 
his reward." But these considerations some- 
how fail to find us. We know, intuitively, that 
a good deed is a good deed, and that whether 
done by a believer, or an unbeliever; whether to 
a believer, or to an unbeliever; whether both 
parties or either party to the transaction shall be 
Christian or pagan, it must be well-pleasing in 
the sight of a good God. And in this contention 
we also, are able to cite Scripture Jesus says, 
for example, that we are to love our enemies, to 
bless them that curse us, to do good to them that 
hate us, and to pray for them which despitefully 
use us, and persecute us. In this we are doing 
good to those who cannot be Christians, yet we 
are counselled to do it in order that we may be 
the children of our Father which is in heaven. 
Again there is the story of that Samaritan who 
finds a stricken man on the Jericho road. He 
goes to him, binds up his wounds, pouring in oil 
and wine, sets him on his own beast, brings him 
to an inn, takes care of him. Here is kindness 
shown by one who is by no means a disciple of 
Christ. He is not even a Jew. Yet he receives 
our Lord's full commendation; and the question 
of the lawyer who stood up tempting Jesus, and 
[211] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

asking what he should do to inherit eternal life, 
is answered: " Love as this Samaritan did." 

There is another interpretation which is as 
broad as these are narrow. It is the interpre- 
tation of the man, who, in our forefathers' austere 
phrase would have been termed " the worlding." 
He says the text is very simple. Kindness to our 
fellows is the sum of all religion; the sole test of 
judgment. Now this is admirable in its simplicity, 
but is it quite true? We could all wish it were 
true, for we all long for simplicity, for the reduc- 
tion of things to their lowest terms. We are all 
like those Jews who, baffled by the personality 
of Jesus, came saying, " How long dost thou make 
us to doubt? If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly." 
But there is that which can never be plainly 
told. Who, for example, can define justice? To 
analyze it is to lose a clear impression of it. Who 
can explain honor? To claim it for oneself is to 
show some lack of it. Who can make love plain? 
It is told only by silence, and the very circum- 
stances which make its assertion necessary, 
make its assertion needless. We can summarize 
the common things of life, but the abiding divine 
reality never. Compass it verbally, and you 
pervert it spiritually. Limit it, and you deplete 
it. Confine it, it leaps the walls of language and 
escapes. It will come, if it comes at all, not 
through explanation or argument or exhorta- 
tion, but mystic, wonderful, too glorious to need 
adornment, too strong to need proof, too irre- 
sistibly simple to need interpretation. God's great 
truth, like great character, forever guards its 
[212] 



The Goodness of the Immortal 

unexplored remainder lest man lose the quest 
which makes him mighty; and it baffles him in 
that quest, lest he forget his gift of spiritual 
discernment which is mightier than reason. 

Men stand before great truth as before great 
objects in nature, divided into two classes. The 
Grand Canyon of Arizona may well be called 
an ultimate work of art. " Between two high 
lines of plateau, level as the sea," says John 
Galsworthy, " are sunk the wrought thrones of 
the innumerable gods, couchant, and forever 
revering, in their million moods of light and 
color, the Master Mystery." Of those who see, 
some wish to return by the next train, and some 
call it a most remarkable formation! Some are 
moved to tears, and some say: "It doesn't seem 
thirteen miles across does it? But they measured 
it just there! Excuse my pointing!" Forever 
men stand divided as men of fact and men of 
feeling. In the sphere of religion, your man of 
fact will be a Thomas, believing nothing, under- 
standing nothing, save as he thrusts pulseless 
fingers into his Saviour's open wounds; while 
your man of feeling will be a St. John the Divine, 
laying his head upon God's bosom, and rising 
thence on wings of faith, to the illimitable skies 
of truth. And the attempt to simplify the text 
until it declares that kindness is the totality of 
religion, the sole test at the judgment, and to 
stop there, is born of our inherent desire to com- 
press the incompressible, to limit the limitless, 
to make finite a matter of infinite reach, to let 
the rationalist who dwells within us strike the 
[213] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

mystic who dwells there also dumb. Faith and 
philanthropy are not synonymous. The " best 
fellow in the world " may not yet dispense with 
Incarnation, Atonement, Repentance, Conver- 
sion, and Resurrection. After all, helpfulness is 
only one of forty-three tests of conduct given in 
the Gospels; and moreover, when Jesus was 
asked what the great commandment was, he 
did not say " good-natured generosity.' ' What 
he did say was; " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 
and with all thy mind." Nor will he deny in the 
day of His judgment what He affirmed in the 
days of His flesh. 

We shall find the true interpretation here only 
as we yield ourselves to the spell of the word 
brethren. Falling from the lips of Jesus it suggests 
all that He said of brotherhood. To Him the 
brotherhood of man was no shibboleth. It was 
a fact based upon the common relationship of 
men to a Father-God, which linked the race in a 
common kinship, and determined the character 
of all human relations. His doctrine decried 
class distinctions; it mingled rich and poor, 
master and slave, employer and employed, in 
gatherings for worship, where all social differences 
were ignored in the joy all felt in their common 
faith. It engendered a social conscience, pro- 
claimed the responsibility of each for the good 
of all, widened the scope of duty to the uttermost 
parts of the earth, widened the ancient limits of 
personal obligation until they circumscribed all 
human need. " Judaism had two co-ordinate 
[214] 



The Goodness of the Immortal 



points — God and man. These were the two 
foci of the curve. Christianity has three — - God, 
Man, and the Other Man." The barrier of race 
broke down before the hosts of love, and hands 
of pity stretched to the outcast, the fallen, the 
despised, to the nethermost lost, because in 
every sinner He had seen the raw material of 
sainthood. He inculcated charity, which before 
had been largely a matter of whim and expediency, 
rescued it from the exclusive possession of the 
rich, and made it a duty for all men as God had 
prospered them. He declared that life is a stew- 
ardship. That powers, talents, opportunities 
are all owed, not owned, that private means are a 
social trust, that men must use them for their 
fellow men, and that between the man of one 
talent and of ten, there is no difference of oblig- 
ation. 

Marvellously has this teaching borne fruit 
in our time. The deepening sense of brotherhood 
becomes for us a social consciousness, which is 
vocal everywhere. The fundamental likeness of 
men in their natures, needs, and destinies has 
become clearer until it is declared that " Every 
painstaking investigation of a social question, 
comes out at some point or other, with a fresh 
discovery of a previously hidden, underlying 
resemblance between classes of men/' while 
these very investigations are of a frequency and 
earnestness hitherto unknown. 

Sociology, no older, as a science, than Herbert 
Spencer, points out that in the evolution of the 
race the great force everywhere at work has been 
[215] 



The Substance of Happiness 



man's likeness to his fellow man, and their mutual 
consciousness of it. The specialists, whether in 
natural or mental science, or in the all-inclusive 
realm of philosophy, have increasingly empha- 
sized the idea of the mutual influence of men. 
The thought of like-minded men influencing each 
other, has led us on to see that this influence is 
not only inevitable, but desirable and indispen- 
sable for our highest development. Life is rela- 
tion, and without large relations there is no large- 
ness of life. " I grow in your growth, and you in 
mine," is the word of the collective conscious- 
ness. None of us liveth to himself, and each of 
us lies stunted and dead if we do not love! Fol- 
lows then that sense of the value and sacredness 
of the individual; that sense of mutual obligation, 
that sense of fellowship, which has now come to 
be writ large even in political platforms. 

There is nothing new in the spectacle of a 
radical party pledged to the effort for social justice, 
but when one half of a great party hitherto sup- 
posed to be conservative, forsakes the other half 
and writes a program of social legislation into 
its platform, we must not be blind to its signifi- 
cance. If love be what Edwards declared it to 
be, " willing the highest and completest good of 
all," then can we say with confidence that society 
is speeding swiftly on to that ideal. It is day- 
break everywhere. But let us remember that 
the dawn-light streams forth from God's far, 
infinite suns. We are brothers because God is 
Father. To each other, and to Him, we are 
bound in one bundle of life. Our interests and 
[216] 



The Goodness of the Immortal 



destinies as men are identical because the impelling 
force of that stream of tendency which bears 
us onward is the will of God. Knowing Him as 
Father, we know that will is Love. Ours is a 
deep and intimate connection with that Will at 
the eternal core of things which is at one with our 
wills in the age-long struggle for the highest good 
of ourselves and of the race. Bound each to each 
by ties of mutual love; bound each to God by 
ties of mutual love, we move in harmony with 
His purpose toward consummations of love 
impossible for us to know. With the great divine- 
human brotherhood which He revealed to men, 
which He sank deep into the consciousness of 
men, the realization of which was made possible 
only by His death, Jesus identified Himself 
fully. The older theology pointed out His tender 
identification with the body of believers, His 
church, and inclined to stop there. But He 
identified Himself with the whole race. The 
term Son of Man in verse thirty-one is of the 
utmost importance in this connection. He speaks 
of Himself as the " Son of God, " five times in 
the Gospels; as " the Son," without qualification, 
twenty-three times; as the " Son of Man" no 
less than eighty-three times. It is thus His 
favorite description of Himself, and indicates 
His own sense of complete oneness with men in 
the duty and privilege of service and suffering — 
nay, in all things save sin, and even into this He 
in one sense entered. 

Thus the last words of the text emerge from 
the mists of misconception, and their meaning 
[217] 



The Substance of Happiness 



stands revealed. The " brethren " are mankind 
knit together in indissoluble fellowship within the 
loving purposes of God. They are His brethren 
because He fully identifies Himself with them. 
He and they, linked together each to each, and 
each to God, are so related that none may act 
toward God without touching his fellow men, 
and none may act toward his fellow men without 
touching God. " What you have done to your 
brother you have done to Me, for I am the brother 
of you all. What you have not done to your 
brother you have not done to Me, for I am the 
brother of you all. And what you have done or 
what you have not done to Me, you have done 
or have not done to God for He is the Father of 
us all. Loveless, you have held men, each man, 
all men — back from the goals of God where 
Infinite affection waits with crowns for all human- 
ity. You have stayed my mission, you have 
thrust your lovelessness athwart a Father's 
purposes of love. Loving, you have recompensed 
the travail of my soul, furthered the Father's 
purposes of love, proved yourselves heirs fit for 
that kingdom which you now inherit. Go, there- 
fore, into life eternal, for inasmuch as ye did it 
unto one of these my brethren, even these least, 
ye did it unto me — the Judge, the Christ, the 
Son of the living God." 

These, then, are the conclusions which we must 
lay to heart. 

First, Immortal goodness is unconscious good- 
ness. No true saint can see his halo. 

Second, Immortal goodness is positive goodness. 
[218] 



The Goodness of the Immortal 

Leaving undone the things we ought to have 
done, rather than doing the things we ought not 
to have done is the condemnation we have most 
to fear. 

Third, Immortal goodness is homely goodness. 
The habit of love in action which makes the lives 
of others easier is of such vital import that it 
is the sole species of goodness mentioned, when 
Jesus, in this His last public teaching, depicts 
the judgment day. And in view of the oneness 
of mankind, these others whom we are to help 
include all, from those of our own firesides to 
earth's remotest bounds. They comprehend at 
once our own families, and the toiling millions — 
that " sad Atlas " who bears upon his shoulders 
the burden of all softer living. Oh! so to catch 
the eternal truth as to know that all men need 
our love! To realize that the miseries of the rich 
are no less terrible than the miseries of the poor! 
To know that in need for love and sympathy no 
human being differs from another! To see each 
man in the shadow of his voiceless griefs, and to 
feel that in some dim sense we are beholding 
Christ upon His Cross! To see his sorrows and 
misfortunes as scribes who jibe and soldiers who 
scourge and mock! To ask ourselves how we 
may stop the jibe, and placate the relentless 
Fates who, there at the foot of the Cross, 
stolidly cast lots for the garments of the cru- 
cified, and what sponge of hyssop upon vine- 
gar we may lift to those white lips of agony! 
The teaching of the text has changed the 
course of history. As the first golden arrow of 
[219]' 



The S ub stance of Happiness 

the dawn fell upon the statue of Memnon, 
throned 

"beneath the Lybian hills, 
Where spreading Nile parts hundred-gated Thebes," 

a strange metallic music, like a broken string's 
vibration, came forth, and men whispered: 
" Behold the god salutes the dawn." When the 
new Gospel of love was spread abroad in Europe, 
another snapping string was heard. It was the 
string of selfish materialism, which broke in music 
of ineffable sweetness, and men whispered to 
each other: "It is high time to awake out of 
sleep. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. 
Let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness 
and let us put on the armor of light." Has the 
imperishable truth of the necessity of active love, 
which has gripped the world, gripped you? Have 
you realized that you are so wondrously inwrought 
with all humanity, that you can neither act nor 
fail to act, without affecting them, and that 
humanity is so related to God the Father, God 
the Son, God the Holy Ghost, that you cannot 
act or fail to act without affecting Him? In 
which group will you stand in that great and 
terrible day of the Lord? Nay, where do you 
stand now? On Christ's right hand, or on His 
left? And you cannot stand upon His right hand 
unti' you have yielded Him your Life's allegiance, 
until you have learned in the secret of His presence, 
the secret of unfailing love. 



[220] 



XIV 

THE MASTER BUILDER 



[221] 



' I am not come to destroy but to fulfil" 

—Matthew 5 



[222] 



XIV 



THE MASTER BUILDER 

M Y mission ," says Jesus, " is not to tear 
down, but to build up; not to un-make, 
but to make." His direct reference is to His 
attitude toward the Jewish Scriptures. Some who 
listened concluded that He desired to supersede 
the Scriptures. The text is his reassurance. 
God's will has been partially revealed; He will 
reveal it perfectly. God's will has been par- 
tially accomplished; through Him it shall ulti- 
mately prevail. " Think not that I am come 
to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not 
come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say 
unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or 
one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till 
all be fulfilled." 

From this purpose Jesus never swerved. He 
emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, 
being made in the likeness of men; He subjected 
Himself to the common experiences of poverty 
and toil and misunderstanding and rejection; 
and finally became obedient unto death, even 
the death of the Cross, that the great construc- 
tive purposes of God might be accomplished. 
Considering Him as a constructive workman 
[223] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

in the spiritual sphere — a Master Builder — 
there are certain thoughts which immediately 
occur. First of all, He came where the work was. 
He had no faith in absent treatment for human 
ills. Ever since, we have been learning that suc- 
cess in our philanthropy depends upon the extent 
to which we put ourselves into it. Forever the 
gift without the giver is bare. Children who have 
walked over carpeted floors, coming close to 
each other, put finger to finger, and are awed 
to find themselves charged with subtle, unsus- 
pected forces. The poor who resent the rich, 
and the rich who ignore the poor, are both charged 
with currents of infinite worth and beauty which 
wait to be revealed when hands come close. 

Jesus also made use of materials which he 
found at hand. Monotheism for example, the 
uncompromising monotheism of the Old Testa- 
ment, was the cherished belief of His countrymen, 
distinguishing them from the surrounding nations. 
He also found a seriousness in religion which 
secured a hearing for Him from the first. Probably 
no other society, before or since, has equaled the 
Jews of Christ's time in absence of indifference 
and levity, and in passionate desire to lay hold 
upon Divine truth. Moreover, there was a class, 
a class within a class, who listened to His teaching 
and instantly allied themselves with Him. In 
the psalms and prophets we find frequent refer- 
ences to" the poor," " the meek/ 7 "the humble/ 1 
" the needy." These terms finally came to have 
a moral significance and are used to indicate all 
those victims of trouble and oppression who 
[224] 



The Master Builder 



have ceased to look to society for relief, and who 
have committed their cause to Jehovah in the 
spirit of resignation. Pious Jews of this attitude 
were still to be found in the time of Christ. The 
first beatitude refers to them and gives a great 
promise: " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for 
theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.' ' And when 
Mary, pouring out her soul in the Magnificat, 
declares " The hungry He hath filled with good 
things, " it does not signify that certain empty 
men shall be filled with bread, but that men and 
women looking for a divine companionship and 
a divine deliverance shall be satisfied. Thus, 
ready for the Master Builder was a prepared 
material, a considerable company of those who 
looked for " the redemption of Israel," but not 
through any existing power, and who, despairing 
of all else, kept in their hearts Isaiah's promise 
of One who should judge the poor with righteous- 
ness and argue with equity for the meek of the 
earth, while they turned rapt faces to the east, 
and steadfastly awaited the Messianic dawn. 

Upon these old materials the Master Builder 
set to work with new ideas. But here we must 
proceed with caution. It is difficult to find new 
ideas anywhere. " A little lyric," says Mr. 
Yeats, " evokes an emotion, and this emotion 
gathers others about it and melts into their being 
in the making of some great epic; and at last, 
needing an always less delicate body, or symbol, 
as it grows more powerful, it flows out, with all 
it has gathered among the blind instincts of daily 
life, where it moves a power within powers, as one 
[225] 



The Substance of Happiness 



sees ring within ring in the stem of an old tree. 
This is, maybe, what Arthur O'Shaughnessy 
meant when he made his poets say they had built 
Nineveh with their sighing; and I am certainly 
never certain when I hear of some war, of some 
religious excitement, or of some new manufacture, 
or of anything else that fills the ear of the world, 
that it has not all happened because of something 
that a boy piped in Thessaly." So true is it that 
every great teacher gathers up and gives again 
the subtle influence of previous and contemporary 
thought that we need not be surprised if we find 
in the words of Jesus that which has caused some 
to doubt, or even deny, that His teaching is 
marked by any high degree of originality. He 
drew much from the law and the prophets under 
rabbinical instruction. The Jewish sects must 
have contributed something, negatively at least. 
That Buddhism and Mithraism or any of the 
Asiatic faiths influenced His conceptions remains 
unproved, and seems more and more beyond the 
probability of proof. On the other hand, close 
study indicates that while the mode of His utter- 
ances has been subject to outside influence, the 
matter of His utterance has all the force of unique- 
ness; for His relation with God was unique, and 
from that relation His teaching springs unique, 
like a crystal stream that deigns no mingling with 
the clouded waters through which it flows. 

He took up the thought of the Fatherhood of 
God, of which the Old Testament is so full. He 
made it tender and individual. The hairs of 
our heads are all numbered. God marks the 
[226] 



The Master Builder 

falling sparrows — how much more must He take 
account of us. If your little child asks for a piece 
of bread, you do not give him a stone to break 
his teeth on; if he asks for a fish, you do not give 
him a serpent to sting him to death. But mark! 
Deep and beautiful as the love of parents is, God's 
love is still more marvelous. " How much more 
shall your Father which is in Heaven " — out 
of the treasures of infinite wisdom, love and 
power — " give good things to them that ask 
Him." 

Again, He made broad the conception of the 
Divine Fatherhood. The Old Testament is the 
first foreign mission document, but the Jews of 
Christ's day had forgotten the promise to Abra- 
ham: " In Thee shall all families of the earth 
be blessed," and had narrowed the blessing until 
it included only themselves. Jesus labors to 
correct this as he gives the parable of the good 
Samaritan, or as He tells them bluntly: " Many 
widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when 
the heaven was shut up three years and six 
months, when great famine was throughout all 
the land; but unto none of them was Elias sent, 
save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon. And many 
lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the 
prophet, and none of them was cleansed, saving 
Naaman the Syrian." 

Again, He emphasized the privilege of com- 
munion between men and their Father. His 
own example must have filled the minds of His 
disciples with this idea. We have no less than 
fourteen recorded instances of His praying, and 
[227] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

this serves only to indicate the constant practice 
of His life. Five of His parables deal with prayer. 
He gives the disciples a specific form of prayer, 
in answer to their request. Prayer is to be offered 
in His name. He may be worshipped as a Divine 
person. In addition to these passages, His teach- 
ing touching the spirit, the accompaniments, 
the forbidden things, the objects and methods 
of prayer are found on many pages of the record. 
To a priest-ridden, ritual-burdened, tradition- 
smothered people he declares that man may com- 
mune directly with his God; that brushing aside 
the mint and anise and cummin, and pushing past 
the august hierarchy itself, he may enter the 
holy of holies in person, and laying his head upon 
the bosom of his Father, may pour into His 
listening ear the story of his longing and his 
pain. 

But full communion between the child and the 
Father could not be until a certain event had 
been brought to pass. This event was the death 
of Jesus. And here the Master Builder brings 
to His work an idea that is positively new. Men 
had died for their fellow men ere this in countless 
episodes of heroic valor. The Hindu told of the 
avatars of Brahma, Siva and Vishnu. The Greeks 
even had the story of a god, Prometheus, who 
suffered because he had benefited, though not in 
order to benefit the human race. But nowhere 
save in these Gospels will you read of one who 
claimed to be divine dying for the sins of all 
mankind; of Deity incarnate dying for lost 
humanity. And instantly, after Jesus had wrung 
[228] 



The Master Builder 

from the lips of Peter the answer to the problem 
of His person, He began to teach the great object 
of His mission. " And Simon Peter answered 
and said, ' Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God.' " " From that time forth began 
Jesus to show" — and the word indicates a care- 
fully elaborated teaching — " unto His disciples, 
how that He must go unto Jerusalem and suffer 
many things of the elders and chief priests and 
scribes and be killed." Never are they allowed 
to forget the transcendent fact of His approaching 
passion. He performs a mighty miracle in 
Galilee and gives His disciples the astounding 
promise that they shall have power to remove 
mountains, but, lest they forget, he adds: " The 
Son of Man shall be betrayed into the hands of 
men and they shall kill him." His lesson on 
humility is clinched with " The Son of Man came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and 
to give His life a ransom for many." Three 
times in Matthew's record, three times in Mark's, 
twice in Luke's, once specifically in John's, and 
many times by implication, the Master brings 
home to them the fact of his approaching death. 
And on the evening of His betrayal, in the inti- 
macy of the last supper, He took the bread and 
blessed it and gave it to His disciples as His 
body; while of the cup He declared " This is 
my blood of the covenant, which is shed for you, 
and for many, for the remission of sins." So 
desirous is Jesus that His disciples shall clearly 
understand that He laid down His life for them, 
and so constant is His teaching, that we may 
[229] 



The Suh stance of Happiness 

almost catch a note of upbraiding in the words 
of the resurrection angel to the women at the 
sepulchre, " He is not here, but is risen; remember 
how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, 
saying, the Son of Man must be delivered into 
the hands of sinful men and be crucified." Who- 
ever reads these closing chapters of the Gospels 
is borne irresistibly onward by an unstayed 
tide which breaks at last about the base of Gol- 
gotha. 

And in the succeeding books there is no reces- 
sion of the tide. The same thought throbs in 
the sermons of Acts. Paul repeats it with a 
frequency which would be monotonous were it 
not for his profundity and passion. Peter in his 
epistles says, " Ye . . . were ... re- 
deemed with the precious blood of Christ . . . 
who his own self bare our sins in his body upon 
the tree." John says, " He is the propitiation 
for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for 
the sins of the whole world. Herein is love, not 
that we loved God, but that he loved us, and 
sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins." 
And the canon closes with the story of a lamb 
slain from the foundation of the world; of a great 
multitude who have come out of the great tribu- 
lation, having washed their robes and made them 
white in His blood; and with ascriptions of glory 
and dominion forever and ever " Unto him that 
loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own 
blood." 

Everywhere the fact meets you that Christ 
died for our sins. You can only get rid of the fact 
[230] 



The Master Builder 

by getting rid of the Book. If we are asked the 
precise and ultimate meaning of the fact we 
shall answer wisely if we say we cannot tell. For 
while this fact like all others is immutable, our 
apprehension of it is never absolute, and changes 
as in the case of many other facts from age to age. 
The surface of the earth is not greatly different 
from what it was when Henry Hudson sailed up 
the river which bears his name, believing it would 
lead him to the shores of the Orient, and little 
reckoning the endless leagues of plain and moun- 
tain-chain and desert that lay between. But 
map making is vastly changed since then. The 
facts of the death of Jesus are as they were in 
the beginning, but our conceptions have changed, 
making always, as we hope, toward adequacy. 
If any imagine they have a completed theory of 
the death of Christ it may be helpful to recall 
how the greatest minds have struggled with the 
problem. Fathers of the early church like Irae- 
neus and Origen and Gregory of Nyssa tell of 
satisfaction rendered to Satan> who has acquired 
rights of conquest over the human race, by the 
sufferings of Christ. A thousand years pass, and 
Anselm, in " Cur Deus Homo/' teaches that 
sin is infinite evil, that infinite evil demands 
infinite sacrifice, and only the Son of God made 
man can expiate the guilt of sin, and propitiate 
the justice of God. Next Abelard develops his 
" moral influence " theory, destined to impress 
modern Unitarianism deeply, and such Trini- 
tarians as Maurice and Horace Bushnell. Five 
centuries pass and Hugo Grotius, a Dutch lawyer 
[231] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

with a lawyer's vocabulary, develops his "govern- 
mental theory." God is the Moral Governor, 
the dignity of His government must be maintained, 
and therefore Christ came and suffered the 
consequences of the transgressions of the race. 
This theory found high favor with the New Haven 
theologians, and when, seventy years ago, it clashed 
against the old Anselmic theory, which had 
passed from the theologians of the Reformation 
— men like Calvin and Luther — to the the- 
ologians at Princeton who passionately held and 
defended it, the controversy shook the church. 
Nor must we forget various forms of a mystical 
theory following the thought of Plato, and held 
by Scotus Erigena in the Middle Ages; by 
Schwenkfeld at the Reformation, and by the school 
of Schliermacher among our German scholars. 

The consensus of modern opinion, is that 
none of these theories, nor all of them, is 
adequate, and that no words have been coined 
to tell the mystery of the death of the Son of God. 
Sacrifice does not tell it. Mediation does not 
tell it. Propitiation does not tell it. Redemption 
does not tell it. Substitution does not tell it. 
Satisfaction does not tell it. Christ's work 
includes all these and sweeps beyond into 
what we can only call the perfection of atone- 
ment. 

But as we look back over the centuries we can- 
not fail to be impressed with this: while the 
mystery of Christ's death forever eludes, yet, 
because the fact is so vital and significant, each 
generation, with unflagging zeal, toils for a solution. 
[232] 



The Master Builder 

It is for us to grasp the fact and not grope for 
the theory. It is the fact to which we must 
cling with unrelaxing grip. " Christ died for our 
sins." Let this slip and we lose the eternal 
anchor of the soul. Take this out of the Evangel, 
and while it may retain an academic interest for 
the student of religions, and while it must retain 
forever undimmed a matchless literary merit, yet 
so far as laying hold upon the masses of humanity, 
and building them as living stones into the temple 
of God is concerned, there has been shorn away 
from the Gospels every possible particle of power. 

And what is it that the Master Builder has 
erected? So far only a framework. We do not 
believe the church has lost its power. It never 
had as much as now. We do not count it a spent 
force with the masses. The masses never were 
attracted to it, and this has been a thorn in the 
side of many, from Chrysostom the Golden 
Mouth even until now. We do not believe the 
laboring men are turned against it. If they were 
it would speedily collapse. Unless they were 
actively interested in it, it could not survive a 
single decade. Nor, on the other hand, do we 
feel that we have any reason to be self-satisfied. 
If we ask what is the greatest obstacle to foreign 
missions the answer is, " Christian civilization." 
In the answer what terrible indictment of 
Christian society! Years ago the church was on 
its knees praying that God would open the gates 
that our missionaries might enter heathen lands. 
A year ago, when the great missionary con- 
ference met in Edinburgh, we heard everywhere 
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The Sub stance of Happiness 



this prayer: " Lord, shut the gates a little, lest 
the flood of the vices of Christendom overwhelm 
our work." But whether we know depression or 
elation in the present moment, this is the glory 
of our faith, the unique claim of Christianity — 
thrilling imagination, challenging our finest man- 
hood — that in the end our Christ shall be 
triumphant. " He shall not fail nor be dis- 
couraged till he have set judgment in the earth, 
and the isles shall wait for his law." " A bruised 
reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall 
he not quench, till he send forth truth unto 
victory." If we are asked for the grounds of 
our confidence we answer, " He was confident!" 
If we are asked the grounds of His confidence we 
answer that in the heart's profoundest deep there 
is an unsatisfied need, which only He can meet, 
and that He knows that He alone can meet it. 

When the church bell rang this morning, out 
through the spaces of the tower, into the cir- 
cumambient air of all this perfumed June its 
vibrations flowed. Even in the stubbornness of 
solid oak and unpierced granite, the rhythmic 
dance of molecule and atom made response. In 
the human heart that which is hardest and stubborn- 
est responds when the story of redemption rings. 
A man may seem indifferent as stone; he may so 
clothe himself with fatuous excuse that no word 
seems to reach his consciousness; he may laugh 
as who should say: " Let us eat, drink, and be 
merry, for tomorrow we die," but in his heart 
of hearts he knows his supreme need is salvation 
for his soul. And there is but One who can supply 
[234] 



The Master Builder 



this need. Men may speak seriously of producing 
rain with explosives, but the billions of tons of 
water which must refresh the earth will come 
only by God's enginery of cloud. The rainmakers 
with their guns bear to the task of watering the 
land the relation that all other moral forces in 
combination bear to the Saviour of mankind. 
Because the profound need of man is for redemp- 
tion, and because He alone can meet the need 
we know that some time — in His good time — 
the temple of the Master Builder shall rise in 
full completion; its wood and stone and brick 
and mortar, its pillars and its lily work touched 
with the red blood of His sacrifice ; its foundation 
God's eternal justice; the light which smites 
upon its golden dome, God's mercy and God's 
love. 

The temple will be builded. Whether we 
help or not, the temple will be builded. But 
our only hope of filling life with reality, of making 
it strong in dignity and worth, and vibrant with 
an eternal significance lies in putting shoulder 
to the work and building with the Master Builder. 
Will you put stones into that eternal temple, 
rising slowly, as men count slowness, toward 
completion? Or will you, still working with 
ephemeral materials — wood, hay, stubble — 
build in blindness, heedlessness, self-sufficiency 
and sin, those transient structures which must so 
swiftly fall before the flames of Judgment? Build 
with Him, and you build a life which defies and 
outlasts the leagued eternities. Build without 
Him, and you build a house of dreams, a fragile 
[235] 



The Substance of Happiness 

shell un warmed by any hearth-fire of God's 
comradeship, unlit by any radiant compact of 
God's unf or get fulness. And from it you must 
soon fare out into the bleak unknown — an 
outcast in the infinite spaces of eternity, even as 
you have been, though you knew it not, an orphan 
in the fields of time. 



[ 236] 



XV 

MY LORD AND MY GOD 



[237] 



" And Thomas answered and said unto /mn, My 
Lord and my God."— John 20: 28. 



[238] 



XV 



MY LORD AND MY GOD 

THOMAS is mentioned once by Matthew; 
once by Mark; and once by Luke, his name 
being given in each case in the formal list of the 
apostles. To find a more extended biography 
we must turn to John. He tells us that Thomas 
was ready to go with Jesus into Judaea though 
he felt it meant death to all who went: " Let us 
also go/' he says to the other disciples, " that 
we may die with him." He was of the company 
who heard Jesus say, " Whither I go ye know 
and the way ye know," and he interrupted " No! 
We do not know where you are going, and we 
do not know the way." He was absent when 
Jesus made His first post-resurrection appearance, 
and when his brethren said: " We have seen the 
Lord," he replied, " Except I shall see in his 
hands the print of the nails, and put my finger 
into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand 
into his side, I will not believe." Eight days 
later he saw and believed, and made the confession 
of the text. Asked for the main facts of Thomas' 
life, we may say they are three; an abysmal 
despondency, a monumental love for Jesus, and 
a confession of faith more advanced than any 
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The Substance of Happiness 



other of the Gospel story. Asked why John alone 
of the Gospel writers gives such details of the 
life, we may say it is because both were great 
lovers of Jesus; or, because it takes a poet like 
John to appreciate a pessimist like Thomas! 
But there is a third reason, the real reason, which 
we shall hope to discover before the sermon ends. 

I. " My Lord and my God." The words 
show that Thomas' deepest need is met. 

He is known as " doubting Thomas," but 
" desponding Thomas " would be more perfectly 
descriptive. And, before we pass harsh judgment 
upon any melancholy man, it is well to let the 
light of sympathetic imagination play upon his 
past life. What immedicable woes had gone to 
the making of this despondency? He had had 
his dreams of youth, no doubt, even as you and I. 
For aught we know, each dream may have ended 
in a bitter waking. Had earthly love proved 
false? There is much in his attitude to suggest 
it. Had he had ambitions — ambitions which 
might seem small enough to us, but which meant 
much to him — and were they thwarted? Had 
loved ones died, and had he watched with no 
resurrection hope, or, if he was a Sadducee, as 
has been maintained, forced by his creed to deny 
the possibility of resurrection? When a ship 
makes port with paint cracked, sails rent, decks 
awash, 

"Trailing like a wounded duck, working out her soul," 

we must, before blaming or ridiculing her skipper, 
find out whether he has laid a course from Pata- 
[240] 



My Lord and My God 

gonia, or from Peconic Bay! But whatever the 
past has meant for Thomas, comes now the 
moment when it shall be forgotten — when his 
long night flees before the flaming daybreak of 
a faith which meets his life's profoundest need. 

And this is faith — the consciousness that life's 
profoundest needs are met. 

There are three elements in faith. First, fact. 
There is no faith without this base, just as no 
arch-bridge can spring in space without abut- 
ments. The arch, however, is more than the abut- 
ment, and from our solid base of fact we spring 
a faith which spans death's river, and links a 
seen and sordid earth to an unseen Beulah. 
Second, emotion, and even the coldest agnostic is 
motived by it. " The search for truth is sup- 
ported by its emotional coefficient," and Herbert 
Spencer, handing to the world his epoch-making 
books, composed in pain and physical weakness, 
testifies by his whole heroic labor to a blazing 
faith in these two things at least — an ordered 
universe and the worth-while-ness of fact. But 
there is still a third element, the element of will. 
The soul goes always questing, though oftenest 
unconsciously, for the satisfaction of its deepest 
needs. Faith emerges where as the result of 
search, these needs find satisfaction. Faith 
emerges when I can personally endorse a dis- 
covered satisfaction as real, adequate, and ulti- 
mate. True of faith generally, it is undeniably 
true of religious faith, which comes not by a 
clearly reasoned process, but by the clear sense of 
a soul's need met. It was precisely thus in the 
[241] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

case of Thomas. And if the emotional stress of 
conviction was in direct proportion to the need 
which the conviction met, we should hardly have 
cared to hear this confession. We could have 
listened to John the Baptist, when, after his first 
sight of Jesus, his thought of Him as conqueror 
and judge took flight, and he saw Him as the 
Sacrifice, while his mighty voice sank to a whisper, 
" Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the 
sin of the world." We could have listened to 
Peter, when, his ebullience all subdued, he rever- 
ently said, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
living God." But when Thomas spoke — this 
Thomas who for so long had been a miracle of 
repression — it was the rending of rocks by 
earthquake, and a great and terrible cry " that 
shivered to the tingling stars 7 ' proclaimed a joy 
so great that it was pain. 

II. "My Lord and my God." The words 
show that Thomas' deepest need is met in a 
person. 

It is the strong tendency of mankind to find 
his most essential truths in personality. In the 
myths of antiquity it is an individual who first 
makes the tool; lights the fire; works the ore; 
forms the weapons; founds the city; and gives 
the religion. Listening to the voice of his own 
instinct, man never doubts that great men inau- 
gurate the great epochs, articulate the great 
truths, and incarnate the great principles by which 
we five. The nineteenth century made desperate 
efforts, but with slight success, to convict us of 
error here, and to prove that great men are 
[242] 



My Lord and My God 



products, not producers, of society; that " epoch- 
maker " is a misnomer, inasmuch as epochs make 
men, not men epochs. Thus was developed that 
" biological theory " which showd the genius 
as an inevitable resultant of social forces, a theory 
against which the late William James turned his 
gift for gentle ridicule. " Can it be that Mr. 
Spencer holds the convergence of sociological 
forces to have so impinged on Stratford-upon- 
Avon, about the 26th of April, 1564, that a W. 
Shakespeare, with all his mental peculiarities, 
had to be born there? And that if the aforesaid 
W. Shakespeare had died of cholera infantum, 
another mother at Stratford-upon-Avon would 
needs have engendered a duplicate copy of him, 
to restore the social equilibrium?' ' We have come 
to see that, though the outstanding man may be 
a resultant of social forces, these forces are so 
complex, and so remote, that the theory can 
never be demonstrated. To the present age, it is 
increasingly certain that the great man's society 
does not create him before he can re-create it. 
If Tennyson's line : 

" The individual withers and the world is more and more." 

once seemed true, it is so no longer; for more 
and more science and experience endorse our 
instinctive findings of our important inspirations 
and satisfactions in our extraordinary fellows. 

If a new continent is to be discovered some 
Columbus must read the driftwood message borne 
upon the tide. If science is to progress some 
[243] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

Huxley must proclaim the reign of law, the 
sovereignty of fact. If thought is to be full-orbed 
our Kants and Platos must weld its shattered 
fragments into systems. Our ways must be blazed 
by the path-finder before we can walk in them. 
Great exemplars must arise before we can imitate 
them. And it is just here that peril lies. We 
follow our heroes slavishly without discrimination 
of what is worthy, and what unworthy of imita- 
tion. We echo our leaders after their leadership 
is antiquated and their ideals outworn. So that 
there comes a time in the history of the race, and 
in the experience of each one of us, when our 
souls demand and require an ideal that is at once 
perfect and incorruptible of time — a personality 
in whom our deepest needs are absolutely met. 

Our deepest needs may be variously conceived, 
but we shall not go far astray if we reduce them 
to three. The intellectual need which demands 
unity and intelligibility in the universe; the moral 
need which demands a perfect justice, holiness, 
goodness, and, finally, love; and the aesthetic 
need which demands the beautiful and the sub- 
lime. The search for the first results in pure 
philosophy; for the second in theology and 
religion; for the third in aesthetics. But however 
far the quest may go in one direction, at the last 
it is one quest. We forever demand some prin- 
ciple of unity which will explain all; and, as we 
come to finer and finer issues, that this principle 
shall not be abstract but personal. The heart 
cries out for One in whom all truths converge; 
One who, standing behind oceans, continents, 
[244] 



My Lord and My God 

harvests, railways, stock exchanges, canvas, 
marble, harp, song, prayer, and thought-system, 
makes the manifold music of the world one 
symphony, which sways us with its rhythm till 
we link with the morning stars that sing together, 
and the wheeling planets that shout for joy; 
One who is so like us, withal, that we may hope 
to grow like Him. 

Christianity says there is One. His name is 
God. And Christianity says He was in Christ. 

Let us not raise the question just now as to 
the sense in which Jesus was divine, but let us 
rather remind ourselves of His definite response 
to our instinctive search for the satisfaction of 
our deepest needs in personality. Let us hear 
again the words in which He emphasized Himself 
as the sole essential for that satisfaction. 

" I am the light of the world ... I am 
the way, the truth and the life ... I am 
the bread of life; he that cometh to me shall never 
hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never 
thirst ... I am not of this world . . . 
if ye believe not, ye shall die in your sins . . . 
This is the work of God, that ye believe on him 
whom he hath sent . . . The words that I 
speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life 
. . . These words have I spoken unto you, 
that in me ye might have peace ... In 
the world ye shall have tribulation. Be of good 
cheer, I have overcome the world . . . Let 
not your hearts be troubled. Ye believe in God, 
believe also in me." 

And to these words we must add those of the 
[245] 



The Suh stance of Happiness 



text, for there is no passage better suited to our 
purpose, " And Thomas answered and said unto 
him 1 My Lord and my God/ " Jesus accepts 
the statement without rebuke, thus clearly affirm- 
ing a divine adequacy for every human need, 
and the question fairly clamors for answer, 
"Was Thomas right?" " Was Jesus God?" 
Let us take time only to say this: If we finally 
answer in the negative we can only do it by choos- 
ing some desperate alternative. We may say 
that Thomas' words are an ejaculation and not 
addressed to Jesus at all. We may say John's 
Gospel is false and the incident never occurred. 
We may say Jesus thought Himself God, but was 
self-deceived. We may say Jesus was a myth 
and never lived, as some perfectly innocent maga- 
zine readers have been led to believe. We may 
say Jesus was a liar and a hypocrite. Or, in oppo- 
sition to all this, we may accept Thomas' estimate 
of Him; His estimate of Himself. Had we time 
to consider the evidence we should probably 
find that not one of us could muster faith suffi- 
cient to accept any of the alternatives. Beside 
such faith as these alternatives require the faith 
of Thomas is a little thing. Indeed, with all 
the evidence in, it would seem that each distinc- 
tively Christian doctrine is believed with far less 
expenditure of faith than is required for belief 
in any alternative proposed. 

But we are not now primarily concerned with 
the Deity of Jesus. We are only reminding 
ourselves of His emphasis upon Himself as the 
satisfaction for our deepest needs. Not once 
[246] 



My Lord and My God 

did he say, " Believe my opinions, accept my views, 
approve my program, join my organization/ 9 
but before he had given opinions, or proclaimed 
views, or made a program, or formed an organi- 
zation He said " Believe me, accept me, approve 
me, join me." Other founders have founded 
religions. Nowhere else is the religion identical 
with the founder. Other founders have needed 
a Saviour; He is the Saviour. Confucianism is 
religion by maxims. Buddhism is religion by 
methods. Mohammedanism is religion by for- 
mulae. Christianity is Christ Lesser teachers, 
emphasizing themselves, fail before the ridicule 
of men. " I can honestly use the words of Jesus, 
1 1 and my Father are one,' " said Bronson Alcott 
to Carlyle. " Yes," was the quiet answer, " but 
Jesus got the world to believe Him." Of all 
earth's leaders only One has dared to claim a 
transcending, all-comprehending uniqueness; only 
One has dared to face man's heart-breaking quest 
for The Personality, and to cry, in the voice of 
convincing authority and compassion: " Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, 
and ye shall find rest unto your souls." 

III. " My Lord and my God." The words 
show that the deepest need of every life may be met 
in a Person. 

May every one believe in Jesus Christ? Yes — 
if Thomas could. Here was a man who had an 
antecedent antipathy to life. In him the criti- 
cally opinionative had slain the trustful. He 
could have believed a tale of war, plague, ship- 
wreck, arson, murder or sudden death readily 
[247J 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

enough. Hearing anything good, he immediately 
concluded it was too good to be true. He groaned 
beneath a chronic and constitutional inability to 
believe; and with this sorry equipment he faced 
the fact of Christ. 

He saw One, who, transfigured on the mount, 
triumphant on the plain, spoke with Moses and 
Elias on Hermon, and raised Lazarus from the 
dead at Bethany. His wisdom and power were 
perfect. Yet Thomas could not believe. 

He saw One who was exquisitely attractive. 
His face, as He taught, was more beautiful than 
the lily in His hand. His voice was sweeter than 
Kidron's flow at eventide. His purity was an 
effulgent aura. His inner beauty revealed itself 
in the perfect art of His discourses and parables. 
He saw that splendor of heroism which sent Him 
to Gethsemane's bloody sweat, and still enabled 
Him to say " Thy will, not mine, be done." He 
saw Him beneath the mockery, the scourging 
and spitting of Pilate's court, and he saw Him 
driven along His sorrowful way as a lamb to the 
slaughter, opening not His mouth. He saw the 
final heroism of the crucifixion, which forced the 
centurion to declare, " Truly this man was a son 
of the gods." He saw always an exquisite per- 
fection of character. Yet Thomas could not 
believe. 

He knew that Jesus loved him, and he loved 
Jesus utterly. If love might ever satisfy a soul, 
it was here; for this love was well-nigh perfect. 
Yet Thomas could not believe. 

He had heard the report of his brethren, " We 
[248] 



My Lord and My God 



have seen the Lord." Yet he could not believe 
until he had seen in His hands the print of the 
nails and put his finger into the print of the 
nails, and thrust his hand into His side. The 
words have been characterized as coarse. They 
are not coarse — when you know Thomas — 
only very pathetic. " I saw those wounds made/ 7 
he says, " and when those terrible ringing ham- 
mers sent the nails through hands and feet, my 
hands and feet were pierced. I saw the spear- 
thrust, and when the streaming blood and water 
ran staining down the quivering white flesh, my 
own heart broke. And except I see those nail- 
prints, and that awful gaping side, I cannot 
believe." 

Yet this man did believe. Eight days later 
Jesus came, for the sole purpose, apparently, 
of speaking with him. " Come hither Thomas. 
Here are the nail-prints. Touch them. Here 
is my sundered side. Put your hand into it. And 
be not a faithless, but a believing man." Then 
it was — when that which was too good to be 
true had become too certain to deny — that 
"Thomas answered and said unto him, ' My Lord 
and my God.' " 

And here we discover John's purpose in telling 
so much of Thomas. It is vital to the purpose of 
his book, which he plainly states: " These things 
are written that ye might believe that Jesus is 
the Christ, the son of God, and that believing ye 
might have life through His name." When John 
shows a man of the Thomas type overcoming all 
obstacles and reaching clear belief; and when he 
[249] 



The S ub stance of Happiness 

has told the way whereby he came, what more 
remains to tell? His work is done. If Thomas 
can believe, every man can believe, and believing 
may have life in Jesus' name. Then, with a sure 
iterary instinct, the Gospel is drawn swiftly to 
its close. 

And what is the way whereby Thomas came? 
We shall miss the significance of the story if we 
fail to see that it is by attitude men start the 
quest by which they come to find their deep needs 
met in Jesus Christ. For the indifferent and 
hostile He has no revelation. Hundreds saw Him 
as a carpenter, a teacher, a wizard, a political 
aspirant, a madman, a vagabond, a malefactor, 
who never saw Him as the Christ of God. For 
Herod He would work no miracles. For the carp- 
ing Pharisees who sought a sign He had none. 
To the taunt of the rabble, " Let Christ, the King 
of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we 
may see and believe," He answers never a word. 
But from the man who, asking nothing in return, 
loved Him with love passing the love of women, 
there was nothing of truth hidden which Jesus 
could reveal, and no saving grace withheld which 
Thomas was able to receive. 

My appeal to you just now, therefore, is not so 
much to believe this or that specific thing con- 
cerning Jesus Christ as for the attitude of faith. 
" Be not faithless, but believing " men. Faith 
is the end of a pilgrimage, reached when the pil- 
grim finds the satisfaction of his deepest need; 
and the satisfaction is not found unless the quest 
is made. Faith emerges when for restlessness we 
[250] 



My Lord and My God 



gain tranquility, and this we do when we take 
the believing attitude toward Jesus. " Ask, 
and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall 
find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." 
Thus simply, yet profoundly, does the Master 
indicate the way to reach the prize of life. Faith 
gives life its deepest truth. " The heart/' says 
Pascal, " has reasons which the reason does not 
know." Faith gives life reality. To live by faith 
in every sphere of thought and conduct, as we do, 
and to stand in the presence of Christ a doubter 
and a sceptic, strongly suggests the mere poseur 
and brings life perilously close to hypocrisy. Faith 
gives life strength. The Swiss martyr, waiting 
while the fire is kindled around the stake, turns 
to his judge and says: " Sir, I have one last 
request to make of you. Put your hand on my 
heart, then lay it on your own, and tell the people 
which beats more violently." And when I read 
in Hebrews the martyr-roll of those who " Had 
trial of cruel mocking and scourgings, yea, more- 
over of bonds and imprisonment; were stoned, 
sawn asunder, slain with the sword, destitute, 
afflicted, tormented, in mountains, dens and 
caves of the earth," and who yet " Subdued 
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained prom- 
ises, quenched the violence of fire, out of weak- 
ness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, 
turned to flight the armies of the aliens," I find 
the strength of all to be the strength of the 
believing heart. 

Have you had faith and lost it? Have it! 
Thomas could. Have you never had it? Have it! 
[251] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

Thomas could. Have it for your deepest need, 
which is not food, nor raiment, nor wealth, nor 
fame, nor position. Have it for your deepest 
need, which is to find God and to be like Him. 
Have it for your deepest need which, at last, is 
goodness. The profoundest need of every man 
is to be a better man. " We feel the thing we 
ought to be, beating beneath the thing we are," 
says Phillips Brooks. " Who shall deliver me 
from this body of death?" says Paul. 

" Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come, 
From God who is our home," 

says Wordsworth. And what is all our yearning, 
our aspiration, our searching, our ponderous 
philosophizing, but just our effort to remember 
and get back? What is our quest for the perfect 
unity, the perfect goodness, the perfect beauty, 
the perfect love, but a striving to come to that 
perfect simpleness, goodness, beauty, and love, 
once ours with God in some far, dim Elysium of 
unborn souls? And why do we so passionately 
posit immortality, if not because we know this 
life is all too short for the journey of return? 
And when the soul has pressed interrogation to 
those distant subtle ends of things where thought 
and speech expire, only to hear a Voice: " Except 
ye be converted and become as little children, 
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," 
and we grope for the way, only to hear a Voice 
say: " I am the way," and when we say, " Life 
[252] 



My Lord and My God 

is too short for the long pilgrimage/ ' only to 
hear a Voice throwing wide before the rapt 
vision of the soul all the possibilities of spiritual 
enhancement which lie in endless life as He 
declares: " I am the resurrection and the life; 
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die," it begins to dawn 
upon us that these coincidences are more than 
coincidences; they are God's standing offers 
for the meeting of our soul's deep need. It begins 
to dawn upon us that the Man must be more than 
man, else how could He know and meet these 
needs so deep that neither we, nor all the master- 
minds of time, can more than half discover them, 
nor half articulate. It begins to dawn upon us that 
we are face to face with the unescapable Christ, 
and all that's left to do is to put the deep need 
over against the divine satisfaction and to be not 
faithless but believing men, while we stand to see 
what may await the venture of our faith. And 
this awaits: we shall find ourselves far on the 
path which leads to perfect truth. Full faith may 
not come at once. To-day you may say : 

" If Jesus Christ is a man — 
And only a man — I say 
That of all mankind I cleave to him, 
And to him I will cleave alway." 

But to-morrow you shall say: 

" If Jesus Christ is a God, — 

And the only God, — I swear 
I will follow Him through heaven and hell, 
The earth, the sea, and the air! " 

[253] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

And the next day all " ifs " may vanish as you 
behold a cosmic Christ and cry with Cardinal 
Newman: " The whole mind of the world will 
be absorbed into the philosophy of the Cross, as 
the element in which it lives and the form upon 
which it is moulded, " or with Paul: " For in 
Him were all things created, in the heavens and 
upon the earth, things visible and things invis- 
ible, whether thrones or dominions or principali- 
ties or powers; all things have been created 
through Him, and unto Him; and He is before 
all things and in Him all things hold together." 
And after that it may be, by the grace of God, 
that you will come to put the eager emphasis 
of Thomas upon the pronoun and say: " My 
Lord and my God." If it be so, then you shall 
know why Jesus faced a world in arms, declared 
no man could take His life against His will, then 
went quietly and gave it with the blood that 
dripped from a naked cross. You will know how 
Thomas could go out to his preaching and his 
martyrdom in the spirit which nerved each hero- 
apostle to his task: 

" Oft when the Word is on me to deliver, 

Lifts the illusion and the truth lies bare. 
Desert or throng, the city or the river, 

Melts in a lucid Paradise of air. 
Only like souls I see the folk thereunder, 

Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be kings, 
Hearing their one hope in an empty wonder, 

Sadly contented in a show of things. 
Then with a rush the intolerable craving 

Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call, 
Oh, to save these, to perish for their saving, 

Die for their life, be offered for them all." 

[254] 



My Lord and My God 



You will know as no sermon can ever tell you, 
why, when Thomas felt the utter truth at last, 
there burst from out his stubborn, granite lips — 
all ashen-gray and trembling now — the words 
which mean so little if they mean less than all: 
" My Lord, and my God!" 



[255] 



XVI 

THE MEANING OF PAIN 



[257J 



" Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye 
have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the 
end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of 
tender mercy." — James 5: 11. 



[258] 



XVI 



THE MEANING OF PAIN 

I ASK you to walk today across an ominous, 
gray plain, where green and growing things 
are " scant as hair in leprosy"; a blasted heath, 
more dread than that which knew the feet of 
Banquo and Macbeth, where the weird trinity, 
Pain, Poverty, and Sin unite in the person of 
Sorrow. Yet it is not all barren. There is some 
heart's-ease amongst the rue and bleeding-heart. 
Nor is it all dark. We shall find some torches 
set; and if God will touch our eye-balls, yonder 
on the far horizon, we shall glimpse a great light. 
It may flash only for an instant, but we shall 
have seen it. Those who see it once are never 
satisfied until they see it again, and the day 
arrives when, no longer flashing and failing on 
the distant skies, it becomes an unwavering sun, 
standing steadily above our heads. 

" Ye have heard of the patience of Job." 
James, writing the earliest book of the New Testa- 
ment reaches back across the centuries to one of 
the early books of the Old Testament, to draw 
his illustration. He passes over those examples of 
religious fortitude which might have been found 
amidst the persecutions of the infant church. 
[259] 



The Substance of Happiness 

He fails to mention other patriarchs who had 
stood changeless, challenging the powers of 
doubt and disaster as the rock the wave. He 
finds the saint of Shinar unique in moral resist- 
ance, and- points to him as an ideal supremely 
worthy of imitation, alike by Jews, whose history 
was a history of achieving saints, and by Gentiles, 
among whose new converts the highest powers 
of endurance were constantly in evidence. 

And surely, in all that ancient world it would 
be impossible to cite a higher authority than 
Job's on the vexed questions of human woe. 
His theories were not adopted; they were expe- 
rienced. He created no lachrymose literature of 
the emotions consciously, but beneath 

"The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune " 

which pierced him through with many sorrows, 
words potent with profoundest meaning and 
emotion — now aspiring, now despairing; now 
sobbing in heart-break, now rejoicing in hope; — 
were forced from him, to find a deathless place 
in the pages of religious history. He loses wealth. 
His loved children die on the eve of a family 
reunion. His health is shattered by foulest dis- 
ease. Human sympathy becomes utter emptiness, 
as his friends accuse instead of comforting, and 
as even the wife of his bosom bids him curse God 
and die. Yet " in all this Job sinned not nor 
charged God foolishly." 

The words of his " comforters w are a futile 
attempt to explain the cause of Job's distress. 
[260] 



The Meaning of Pain 



Pain, in their view, is neither more nor less than 
punishment for sin. Their conclusion, therefore, 
is that Job must be quite other than he seems, a 
hoary reprobate who receivs just recompense 
for evi deeds. They use a vast amount of lan- 
guage but it only rings the endless changes on 
this obsession. The idea takes different colors 
as it passes through minds of widely different 
calibre and habit, but its identity remains. Now 
it is Eliphaz who speaks, the patriarchal chieftain, 
grave and grandiose. Now it is Bildad, the man 
of tradition and precedent, distrusting novelty 
and fearful of progress. Now, it is Zophar the 
passionate, unreasoning reactionary, narrow in 
his conceptions, bitter, vulgar, slanderous and 
insulting in his invective. There are three minds, 
three voices, but one thought. And in that 
thought Job is a moral monster justly condemned 
to monstrous agonies of punishment for his sins. 

Goaded beyond all forbearance, Job storms 
forth in righteous rage for vindication. He is 
an instrument of revelation now, fashioned in 
the furnace-heat of unutterable woes. Loss of 
loved ones, physical torture and weakness, reit- 
eration by those whom he had accounted friends, 
of the basest charges, of which he knows himself 
innocent — these give timbre to a trumpet- voice 
which sends forth no uncertain sound in the great 
battle which all must wage in a world beset by 
grief. 

Concerning the meaning of his suffering, he 
declares that there is no necessary proportional 
connection between it and his sin. He has not 
[261] 



The Substance of Happiness 



been a perfect man, but he knows that he has 
been a righteous man. The blessing of those 
aided when ready to perish has often fallen on 
his ears. He has delivered the fatherless, the 
widow, and him that had no helper. Out of the 
depths of this, his present terrible experience; 
out of years of quiet observation, he has learned 
that it is not only the guilty, but more frequently 
the weak who suffer, and that the unrighteous 
prosper as frequently, and as fully as the righteous. 
Not calmly, but with such fiery and convincing 
passion that his tormentors are finally silenced, 
does he drive his facts home. Concerning the 
duration of his trouble he is convinced that it 
will not continue endlessly, for he knows that 
his redeemer and vindicator lives, and that he 
shall be delivered in God's good time. Con- 
cerning the Power which holds him helpless and 
in pain, he will have faith in spite of all : " Though 
he slay me, yet will I trust in Him!" 

Thus Job reveals three important factors in the 
baffling problem, and the importance of his con- 
tribution becomes apparent when we realize 
something of the darkness of that night of ignor- 
ance in which he and his contemporaries lived. 
Indeed, it is doubtful whether the average man 
of our own time has progressed as far in his think- 
ing as Job had when he declared his three friends 
to be miserable comforters, forgers of lies, phy- 
sicians of no value, and made his appeal from their 
imperfect judgment to the infinite and unsearch- 
able wisdom of God. Yet, he fails to solve the 
enigma in any real sense. What he reveals is 
[262] 



The Meaning of Pain 

rather a certain unique attitude toward the 
insoluble. If God is good, why should He slay? 
If Job was thoroughly convinced of that goodness 
the very vehemence of his declarations shows 
with what difficulty he holds to his conviction. 

Happily, the story does not end here. A more 
complete solution is presented. Job comes at 
last to hear, not human argument, but the very 
voice of God. How great the disparity is between 
what God says, and what men say He says, 
" none but His loved ones know." The patriarch 
enters upon a mystical experience from which he 
emerges changed, soul-satisfied. And the differ- 
ence lies in this, that at last God Himself has 
been disclosed. " I have heard of thee by the 
hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee." 
He is convinced as God speaks to him out of the 
whirl- wind, that God's ways are true and man's 
indictment of those ways puerile. Man cannot 
bind the cluster of the Pleiades, nor loose the 
bands of Orion, nor set the bounds of ocean. 
He cannot even know when the wild goats bring 
forth, nor loose the bands of the wild ass. 

Surely the God who creates and preserves the 
world we see, the God who reigned when the 
foundations of the world were laid, and the morn- 
ing-stars first sang together, who hangeth the 
earth upon nothing, who holdeth the enginery 
of cloud, and the treasures of the snow and hail 
in the hollow of His hand, and provideth food 
for every living thing, — surely this God of 
wisdom, power, and goodness in the wide affairs 
of the universe may be trusted to act in perfect 
[263] 



The Substance of Happiness 



wisdom toward man the weakling, who, at best, 
knows but in smallest part. The power which 
blesses myriad millions may well be trusted to 
bless one righteous soul, even though, judged by 
appearances, that soul is utterly accursed. He 
argues here concerning God as we might argue 
toward some man in public life, who, by years 
of integrity had won our fullest confidence. 
" Though this particular instance seems to his 
discredit, and though I cannot understand it, 
my faith remains unshaken. I know that time 
will make all clear." Finally, awed and softened, 
and instructed by God's revelation of Himself, 
Job sees that the question involved is too vast 
for the cut-and-thrust of all slight human dia- 
lectic, and he sinks into the all-enfolding peace 
of those everlasting arms, which ever open for 
the sons of faith. The rationalist may say the 
issue has been evaded. The righteous man will 
know it has been transcended. The sceptic will 
say the fight has been abandoned. The righteous 
man will know Job won the battle — for man's 
completest victory and his ultimate crown come 
to him in the hour of his full surrender to the 
Almighty. 

Thus Job lit a torch and set it in the waste of 
human woe. It is ours to hold it high aloft, and 
widen the circle of light through the fuller revela- 
tion which has come to us. Jesus was fond of 
the " How much more" argument. "If ye then 
being evil, know how to give good gifts . . . 
how much more shall your Father . . . give 
good gifts. Consider the ravens : for they neither 
[264] 



The Meaning of Pain 



sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse 
nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much 
more are ye better than the fowls. If then God 
so clothed the grass, which is today in the field, 
and tomorrow is cast into the oven; how much 
more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith.' ' 
We recall this familiar expression of our Lord, 
as we think of Job and of ourselves. If Job, in 
the dim dawn of revelation, could display such 
heroic faith, and win through doubt to peace, 
how much more we, to whom God has so much 
more perfectly made known His will. 

We possess a four-fold advantage over the Man 
of Uz. First, the world revealed to us by modern 
science is immeasurably more awe-compelling 
than the world he knew. He had no geography, 
no natural history, no telescope and no micro- 
scope. He knew vaguely, one small part of a 
world, which is one of the smallest of worlds. 
Man's full understanding and domination of 
nature was a dream which haunted the Hebrew 
mind, but so far it was little more than a dream. 
Today we have discovered and subdued the 
animal creation, pierced the jungle, and sailed 
the uncharted seas. We have tamed the cosmic 
forces of fire, wind, and wave, until they kneel 
like willing captives at our feet. The power of 
steam, the weird wizardry of electricity, light — 
through the magic of the camera become an 
artist to paint instantly the rugged peaks, or the 
faintest tracery of leaf and flower, or to delineate 
the features of our friends, or to disclose the 
secrets of the stars; — the daily marvels of the 
[265] 



The Sub stance of Happiness 

laboratory and of the observatory; all these 
things so familiar to us, had no place in the 
patriarch's world. If he could know the awe 
that leads to perfect faith, how much more we. 

Second, none of us are as sorely tried as Job. 
We may have had one of his experiences, perhaps 
more than one. We may have known experiences 
which bear some resemblance to all of his. But 
to know all his calamities, in the degree wherein 
they beset him, has never been given to any one 
of us. To draw in complete detail the picture 
of Job's miseries, would only harrow our feelings 
uselessly. Let it suffice to say, that the very 
power of hell was brought to torture him; that 
God consented to the test, and that probably 
no other save Jesus ever knew such extremity 
of mental and physical pain. If Job could still 
endure, how much more we, under the burden of 
our lesser sorrows. 

Third, we have the Booh of Job, which Job 
did not have, and the first chapter shows clearly 
that his pain was of God's ordering. Sorrow's 
crown of sorrow, for many, is their uncertainity 
concerning its source. Could they know God 
sent it, they could be reconciled, and could bear 
it with heroic fortitude. But did God send it? 
Alas, the skies are adamant, and no answer comes. 
So it was with Job. He could not see the curtain 
lift upon that stage where God and Satan met. 
He could not hear Satan charge Job with the 
typical sin of the Jewish race, serving God for 
pecuniary gain. He could not hear God express 
his utter confidence in him, nor the defiant per- 
[ 266 ] 



The Meaning of Pain 



mission given Satan to put him to the proof. 
He could not know that he was to stand as the 
champion of his God, his nation, and the race, 
to justify the ways of Deity to men, and to exhibit 
that sublime faith in the midst of woe, which 
more than all else holds the sneer of the sceptic 
silent, and proclaims the world ruled by perfect 
law, which still is perfect love. If Job could 
stand impregnable, and battle in the dark, how 
much more we, who wage our warfare in the 
light. 

Our chief advantage over Job lies in our vision 
of Calvary, the supreme example of undeserved 
suffering, sent by God, for the highest ends. 
We may vehemently deny that God sends trouble. 
We may put the blame for the death of our loved 
ones upon drains, or germs, but we only quibble 
with words and grow heated over a point of view. 
Except for the purposes of theological debate, 
the pain God permits is the pain God decrees. 
To deny God's responsibility for pain is to ignore 
not only the prologue of the Book of Job, but the 
tragedy of Golgotha, the paramount event of 
time. And James summarizes alike the con- 
tribution which Job makes to the solution of 
the mystery of pain; — and the contribution 
which all Christian experience makes, when 
he says that, given an understanding of the 
Lord's purpose He is " Very pitiful and of tender 
mercy." 

But it is precisely this understanding of the 
Divine purpose which we do not have, and the 
absence of it creates our central difficulty. The 
[267] 



The Substance of Happiness 



scientist may declare that pain is protective. It 
is a danger-signal. The organism, being warned, 
will hasten to defend itself, or will seek by flight 
to put itself beyond the reach of peril. The 
organism most keenly sensitive will therefore 
survive, and, reproducing its kind, will mahe the 
species permanent. It must be borne in mind, 
however, that some of the most malignant diseases 
give no warning whatever until it is too late to 
effect a cure. A cup of crystal-clear water may 
contain microbes so deadly that no skill can cir- 
cumvent, nor power crush them, once they have 
passed the citadel. Moreover, the explanation, 
which has a certain value where physical pain is 
concerned, has no application whatever when 
we consider mental anguish. The protective 
theory therefore is interesting and valuable, but 
inadequate. 

The moralist may advance the corrective 
theory of pain. He cannot hold that it is purely 
punitive, for at least two reasons. Fust, there 
is the story of Job. Second, there is our Lord's 
statement in the thirteenth of Luke, concerning 
the Galilseans whose blood Pilate had mingled 
with their sacrifices; and the eighteen slain by 
the falling tower of Siloam. These were not, 
Jesus says, sinners above others. Unable to be- 
lieve, then, that pain invariably punishes, it is 
still possible to maintain that it frequently recti- 
fies. It has a corrective function in moral life 
akin to its protective function in physical life. 
It warns and restrains the sinner. But we can- 
not deny that the deterrent power of pain is 
[268] 



The Meaning of Pain 



largely counterbalanced by its brutalizing effects. 
It is more than doubtful whether flogging ever 
made a boy better, or the stocks, a thief. Neither 
force nor fear appreciably restrains the evil 
intent of the transgressor. Moreover, we always 
find it difficult to avoid the feeling that this 
argument lies in the same plane with that of 
Job's three comforters, that its line and theirs 
will shortly touch, and continue in complete 
and harmonious identity. 

The saint often disdains to advance any theory. 
He takes refuge in the faith that this life will be 
supplemented by a better one, and fixing his eyes 
upon that life, he refuses to be drawn into debate 
concerning the problems of this. He holds his 
hope, amounting to a conviction, simply because, 
with him, existence is unthinkable without it. 
But this attitude can scarcely satisfy one who 
is not a saint; and we are not all saints. What 
we really wish to know is, whether it may be 
possible to gain a position in advance of Job's 
friends; of Job himself; of the Book of Job; of 
the protective theory; the corrective theory; 
and of that blind faith in futurity, as explanation 
and recompense, which is characteristic of the 
saint. 

" Behold, we count them happy which endure. 
Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have 
seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very 
pitiful, and of tender mercy." Re-reading the 
text, we see that it is made up of two parts. There 
is first a universal principle; then a particular 
instance. " We count them happy which endure/' 
[269] 



The Substance of Happiness 

is the principle. The story of Job is the specific 
example. So far we have dealt only with the 
illustration. We must now turn our attention 
to the principle. It is either a pious platitude or 
an unfathomed truth, and as there are no pious 
platitudes in Scripture we may be sure there is 
hid treasure here. We must discover it, and bring 
it forth into the light. 

" Behold !" — the thing seems impossible, yet, 
it is true — a we count them happy which endure." 
The statement startles at first, but a little thought 
will help us see plain its essential truth. We 
seldom think, for example, of the martyr's pain 
as being pain in the ordinary sense at all. Reading 
the story of his death, it is not suffering which 
predominates but joy. Stephen dies with a face 
like the face of an angel. Hugh Latimer calls 
to his fellow-martyr, Ridley, as each is fastened 
to the stake: " Be of good comfort, Master 
Ridley, play the man! We shall this day light 
such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I 
trust shall never be put out." From the time 
the Christian church was organized at Jerusalem, 
until the middle of the third century, no decade 
passed, scarcely a year passed, without its martyrs, 
and these met death so joyfully that they must be 
expressly forbidden to seek it. When Ignatius 
was sentenced to be fettered, taken to Rome, and 
thrown to the wild beasts to amuse the people, 
he heartily thanked God. Fearful that the 
Roman Christians may effect his release he 
writes: " For if ye be silent and leave me alone, 
[270] 



The Meaning of Pain 

I am a word of God; but if ye desire my flesh 
then shall I be again a mere cry. Nay, grant me 
nothing more than that I may be poured out a 
libation to God, while there is yet an altar ready. 

I exhort you, do not an unreasonable 
kindness unto me. I am God's wheat, and I 
am ground by the teeth of wild beasts that I 
may be found pure bread. May I have the joy 
of the beasts that have been prepared for me." 
Follow the tales of self-sacrificing devotion through 
all periods, and you will find it impossible to list 
such acts among the evil things of the world. 
They display humanity on the high summits of 
its most thrilling victories; they fill the heart 
of the beholder and the sufferer alike with pride 
and gladness. 

" What is martyrdom 
But death-defying utterance of truth." 

And hot ashes blown from the stake's foot lend 
wings to the conflagration of new-found reality 
which is to wrap the world in flame. Not that it 
is physically excruciating, but that it is morally 
superb, is the deep impression inevitably produced 
upon both the victims and the students of heroic 
sacrifice. 

" We count them happy which endure." Think 
now of the athlete. His inconveniences and 
hardships give his sport its zest and tang. Pene- 
trating the wilderness, every strong man feels 
something of the pioneer's joy in overcoming 
obstacles. The mountain-climber undergoes the 
most trying toil, braves acute dangers, and by 
[271] 



The Substance of Happiness 

reason of these stern difficulties thrills with the 
joy of his perilous adventure. A man's athletic 
pleasures are an index of his physical condition. 
The very strong may enjoy polo or foot-ball. 
Those of less rugged physique enjoy base-ball 
or tennis. After these come cricket, or golf, or 
croquet. The man who lies ill in bed, can enjoy 
no hardship of any sort whatever. The weight 
of his sheets, the light of the lamp, the harsh 
grating of a hinge alike exhaust him. In so 
far as a man is in health, in so far can his pleasure 
assimilate pain and translate it into happiness. 
To your enervated weakling, the lightest exercise 
is an unspeakable bore, and has been from the 
writer of Ecclesiastes to the dilettante of today; 
while to young David in his " manhood's prime 
vigor," 

" the leaping from rock up to rock, 
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver 

shock 

Of the plunge in the pool's living water," 

make up the " wild joy of living." 

Now the martyr transforms pain into joy 
passively. The athlete transforms pain into joy 
actively. But there are certain instances when 
both the active and passive sides of the process 
are revealed at once. The first illustration that 
occurs is that of the dervish who mingles devotion 
to his religion with wild ecstacy of physical effort 
until at last he reaches the point where he can 
take the red-hot iron in his hands, kiss it, and feel 
no pain. Or, we recall the frequent instances of 
soldiers wounded in battle who fight on wholly 
[272] 



The Meaning of Pain 

unconscious of their hurt. And a condition not 
altogether dissimilar to these is found in the case 
of every mystic of the active type. Turn again 
to your biography of Francis, and Bernard, and 
Luther; of Loyola, and the Wesleys; of Moody, 
and Phillips Brooks, and Frank Bullen, and Dora 
Pattison. You will find them so uplifted from 
the surge of sorrow by lives of service, that 
suffering is incidental to their life's great joy. 
They join in Paul's triumphant cry: " I have 
learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to 
be content. I now rejoice in my sufferings for 
you, and find the full completion of that which 
is lacking, on my part, in the fellowship of the 
sufferings of Christ." 

The point here is this: no pain is pain at all 
times, nor of necessity. It is subject to transfor- 
mations which draw its sting. Love is one agent, 
the mightiest agent, for changing pain to joy. 
Go to the old chest and take out the dress worn 
by that child who died. Take the small shoe 
with the buttons gone, the toe almost worn 
through, and feel again the warmth of the wee 
foot n your hand. Here are the toys, rusted 
now, but otherwise as in the day they dropped 
from tired fingers. The dolls, too, are here, over 
which the baby used to babble by the hour. 
Handle them as often and as fondly as you will, 
but put them back always, if you can, with some 
new resolve. See, if you can, that multitude of 
children with pale and sunken faces which fills 
the world. Hear them! 



[273] 



The S ub stance of Happiness 

11 ' For oh/ say the children, ' we are weary, 

And we cannot run or leap ; 
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely 

To drop down in them and sleep. 
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping, 

We fall upon our faces, trying to go; 
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, 

The reddest flower would look as pale as snow; 
For, all day, we drag our burden tiring, 

Through the coal-dark, underground — 
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron 

In the factories, round and round ! ' ' 

And if, when you have seen and heard, you conse- 
crate yourself to a ministry of love in their behalf 
your pain shall slowly, surely die in the ineffable 
peace of that consecration. " He that goeth 
forth with weeping, bearing precious seed," not 
he who hugs his sorrow, " shall come again with 
rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." It is 
not enough that we keep the graves of our dead 
green, but standing beside them we must conse- 
crate ourselves to the work they left undone. If 
the father dies in the thick of service for church 
and state, the sons must find their joy in devotion 
to his unfinished tasks. If the son is promoted 
from his class in college to the higher ministries 
of heaven, those who remain must make his 
ideals real. As missionary grave and soldiers 
monument quicken us to heroic sendee, so must 
the memory of our loved and lost. From their 
relaxing hands we must snatch the falling colors 
and press on to the joys of victory. 

Pain, transmuted into service by love, is no 
longer pain. If you have found pain evil, and 
bitter, it is because you have failed to translate 
[274] 



The Meaning of Pain 

it into sympathetic effort. To be able to do this 
with our whole heart is to know by experience the 
fullest meaning of Redemption. To be able to 
do this with our whole heart is to reach that 
correlation with the universe for which we 
always grope. It is to find, at last, the cosmic 
peace. 

But one may answer, "I am shorn of strength, 
I am able to do nothing. I am crippled, invalid, 
unfit.' ' Still canst thou love, and loving thou 
shalt serve, for no ill of the flesh can wrest from 
thee thy place in God's great plan. Marcus 
Aurelius says : " Just as we must understand when 
it is said that Aesculapius prescribed to this man 
horse-exercise, or bathing in cold water, or going 
without shoes; so we must understand it when 
it is said, that the nature of the universe pre- 
scribed to this man disease or mutilation or loss 
or anything of the kind. . . . And as the 
universe is made up out of all bodies to be such a 
body as it is, so out of all existing causes destiny 
is made up to be such as it is. . . . Let us 
then, receive these things as well as those which 
Aesculapius prescribes . . . Zeus would not 
have brought on any man what he has brought, 
if it were not useful for the whole . . . For 
two reasons, then, it is right to be content with 
what happens to thee; the one because it was 
done for thee, and prescribed for thee, and, in a 
measure had reference to thee, originally from 
the most ancient causes spun with thy destiny; 
and the other because even that which comes 
severally to every man, is to the power which 
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The Substance of Happiness 



administers the universe, a cause of felicity and 
perfection, even of its continuance/ 

Milton closes the sonnet on his blindness with 
the words: 

"They also serve who only stand and wait." 

But they who stand and wait and suffer and love, 
serve infinitely more. To have an athlete's 
vigor, to live a life of active philanthropy is 
indeed good. But there is something better. It 
is to be scourged and broken, while we yet bear 
witness by our courage, steadfastness and loving 
service to the wisdom and the love of God. And 
this is not man's preaching but God's. He 
preached it in the counsels of eternity. He 
pictured it in Job. He practised it upon His 
cross. 

We have heard of the patience of Job. We 
have seen the purpose of the Lord. Behold! 
we count them happy which endure. For pain is 
given that in a thousand ways, dim and impossible 
to trace, it may be changed into service, and 
through service into joy. The world's vast need 
for love's service is God's vindication for the 
world's great pain. Slowly, blindly, man learns 
escape from sorrow, learns God's invariable love, 
through his own love for his fellow-men. 

To transmute all suffering into joy through 
love! ... Is the light we lift too bright for 
the eye? Or is it too faint to endure? Does it 
dazzle us? Or must it flush, only to fade and die 
again upon the clouded skies? If we have fairly 
caught its gleam we shall follow it. It shineth 
more and more unto the perfect day. 

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XVII 

CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR 



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" / will not leave you comfortless: I will come to 
you." — John 14: 18. 



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XVII 

CHRISTUS CONSOLATOR 

MEN crave God. So it has been from the 
beginning; is now; shall be. The historic 
faiths, whether pagan or otherwise, have been so 
many quests for God if haply He might be found. 
Idol-making has been the attempt to make God 
tangible; to give to Deity a local habitation and 
a name. The nations surrounding Israel were 
idolatrous, and the danger of idolatrous taint for 
Israel was always imminent, but the prophets 
wrought so well that when in later centuries 
every nation beneath the sway of Rome was 
devitalized and contemptible religiously, Judaism 
was an unshorn Samson in its possibilities of 
power. There had been some accommodation, it 
is true; some condescension to the capacity of 
the people. God had been revealed by day in the 
pillar of cloud, and in the pillar of fire by night. 
He had shined forth between the cherubim. His 
angelic messenger had conversed with men. But 
gradually the material elements had been elim- 
inated, until the Law was the sole representative 
of Jehovah. 

Then it became apparent that the Law could 
not suffice. If it revealed Deity, it also congealed 
the human emotions. It was doubtless an expres- 
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The Substance of Happiness 

sion of Divine love, but who could feel its heart- 
throb! "The letter killeth," Paul cries, "the 
spirit giveth life." But men could not find the 
spirit, and apprehending the letter only, they 
mutilated even that. " And the commandment 
which was ordained to life," says Paul again, " I 
found to be unto death." A young man came 
one day to Jesus who knew the law, and had 
kept it from his youth up, yet peace had been 
denied him. Jesus said: " Sell! Come! Follow 
mel 

When Jesus began His ministry man's craving 
for God found full satisfaction for the first time. 
We recognize the accents of the "God satisfied" 
when John the Baptist says, " Behold the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sin of the world"; 
when Peter says: "Thou art the Christ, the 
son of the living God"; when John says: " And 
we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only- 
begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." 
We even hear it at last from the stolid granite 
hps of Thomas as they open to the great confes- 
sion, — " My Lord and my God." 

All His disciples had felt the mystery and power 
of His presence. They had found that presence 
one of infinite compassion. Now it was to be 
withdrawn. " Little children, yet a little while 
I am with you. Ye shall seek me. , . . 
Whither I go ye cannot come. . . . Whither 
I go thou canst not follow me now." Peter 
answers with a broken-hearted cry in which the 
universal longing, its endless thwarting, and the 
death of hope that will not die are mingled: 
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Christus C ons o I at or 

" Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will 
lay down my life for thy sake." Jesus says, 
" Have ye not learned that this my body, is not 
myself; that my physical presence is of small 
moment? My visible presence may depart. My 
body may be nailed to a cross, but I, the real 7, 
the invincible I, the I which men cannot crucify, 
I will not leave you desolate, comfortless: 1 
will come to you." This is the full, mighty mean- 
ing of the text: the cosmic craving for Deity is 
met, and the presence of One who comforts us, 
never leaving nor forsaking, has been bestowed 
for evermore. 

Great is our need of comfort. The Stoic may 
ignore pain; the newer cults may deny its exist- 
ence, but unless men lose all compassion for their 
brothers, they must know pain as a reality, 
terrible, tremendous. Read the story of social 
surveys in industrial centers. Read the records 
of investigation into various social evils of our 
time. Behold the beauty of silken vestments, 
and behold the starved Chinese as he unwinds 
that silk from the cocoon, then devours the 
residue. Consider the cost in accidents and deaths 
of the industries of a complex, speed-mad society, 
every sky-scraper taking its toll of a life per 
story; every railway killing its thousands and 
maiming its ten thousands; every department of 
production claiming its victims until our articles 
of use and luxury are tinged red with sacrificial 
blood. Listen to the great music, the great 
poetry. In its undertone are the notes of an 
eternal sadness : 

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The Sub stance of Happiness 



" then black despair, 
The shadow of a starless night, was thrown 
Over the world in which I moved alone." 

So Shelly feels the loneliness and grief of life. 
Tennyson records the common experience when 
he says, " Never morning wore to evening, but 
some heart did break. " Perhaps some over- 
whelming sorrow has found you, personally, and 
thus, as the search light flings its arc of revel- 
ation across immensities of sea and shore, your 
sorrow flashes to your comprehension the message 
of the world's vast pain. 

Myriad though they be in number, our griefs 
differ little in character. It seems otherwise. 
Our own griefs appear to be unique. We echo 
the prophet: " Behold, and see if there be any 
sorrow like my sorrow." Sorrow is the supreme 
egotist. But all the literatures of the ages, as 
some one points out, have succeeded in depict- 
ing only four types of despair. There is the 
despair of the Rubaiyat. It is the ultimate 
despair. It includes everything. To drown 
sorrow in the wine-bowl is all that's left to do. 
There is the despair of Ecclesiastes. It is the 
despair of final issues. Everything is beautiful 
in his time, but what of eternity? There is a 
time to feast, embrace, eat, drink, and behold 
with joy the shining of the liberal sun, but the 
end thereof is — emptiness ! There is the despair 
of all finite things which is characteristic of the 
saints. And there is that despair of all theories 
of pain, which has its classic setting in the Book 
of Job. Moreover, all the sorrows of mankind, 
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C hristus C ons o I at or 

whether they reach the point of despair or 
not, may be classified under a few heads; and 
Jesus has His perfect consolations for them 
all. 

There is the sorrow due to the slow progress of 
Christ's Kingdom. This sorrow lay heavy on 
the hearts of the Apostles as it must on the hearts 
of all who long for the triumph of goodness. 
Jesus says: " In the world ye shall have tribu- 
lation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome 
the world." Every word and act of His life 
reiterated this conviction of final victory. Those 
who catch His spirit move forward doubting 
nothing. 

There is pain, distress, physical and mental 
limitation through the weakness of the flesh. 
Jesus discloses the spirit life to be the real life, 
far transcending in importance the life of the body. 
Are we hungry? Man shall not live by bread 
alone. Are we weary? He will give us rest. He 
dies upon a cross and dying, discourses not of 
earthly existence, but of Paradise. Paul dis- 
covered that though physical health may be 
desirable, it is not essential, and the strength of 
his great soul was made perfect through the very 
weakness of his flesh. 

There is care, anxiety, worry. Half of it is 
due to thriftlessness. See once more the feeding 
of the five thousand. " When they were filled 
he said . . . Gather up the fragments that 
remain, that nothing be lost." For that half of 
worry which is not due to thriftlessness is there 
anything that can help like His word concerning 
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The Substance of Happiness 

the lilies of the field, and the fowls of the air, and 
the over-arching tenderness of God? 

There is bereavement, the loss of those we loved. 
But He has wrought out the possibility of eternal 
reunion. 

And over death, and the fear of death, He who 
with exceeding sorrow took the cup from His 
Father's hand, that He might taste death for 
every man, has won the victory and sent his cry 
of triumph like a bugle clang above a dying 
world: " I am the resurrection, and the life: 
He that believeth in me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth 
in me shall never die." 

But Jesus has more for us than a mere fitting 
of chapter and verse to our separate needs. He 
shows us that we are all members of a great 
family, in which God is Father; and that the 
sorrows which come to us are for our good. " For 
whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and 
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth . 
We have had fathers after our flesh . . . 
they verily for a few days chastened us as seemed 
good to them, but he for our profit. Now no 
chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, 
but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth 
the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them 
which are exercised thereby." 

Have you had an experience like this? Your 
child is ailing. Your family physician comes. 
He examines carefully and says, " The trouble 
is here, and later, though I hope to avoid it, we 
may be obliged to use the knife." Weeks go by. 
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C hristus C ons o I at or 

Your physician comes again. " We must operate 
now," he says. " We cannot delay longer." Then 
the faint, never-to-be-forgotten odor of the 
anesthetic, the swift sure strokes of the blade, 
returning consciousness, — and the danger is 
past, the long sure cure begun. Has a loved one 
been maimed and mutilated? No a loved one 
has been saved. Hospitals, grim, forbidding 
palaces of pain are almost beautiful in your eyes 
after that. Love is inlaid with their foundations, 
mingled with their bricks and mortar. Within, 
what angels minister! Angel Asepsis! Angel 
Antisepsis! Mighty angel Anesthetic! What 
night-long consecrated vigils are here forever 
held! What treasures of skill and wisdom are 
here devoted ! Here, in the murk of man's unend- 
ing agony, what flashing swords of love and 
healing are continually unsheathed! To this we 
send our best beloved, because we love them. 
"If ye then . . . know how to give good 
gifts unto your children, how much more shall 
your Father which is in heaven, give good gifts 
to them that ask him." 

In a sense wider and more perfect still, the 
Comforter comes to us. Even the relationship 
between a child and a father is only a relation- 
ship, close though it be. The context reveals an 
intimacy which deepens from relationship to 
oneness. " Ye shall know that I am in my Father, 
and ye in me, and I in you." " Abide in me, and 
I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of it- 
self, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, 
except ye abide in me." In its farthest reach the 
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The Substance of Happiness 

Comforting Presence means incorporation. " Now 
are ye the body of Christ and members in par- 
ticular." It means unification. My will becomes 
so completely God's will that when He acts He 
does my will, and when I act I do His will. It 
means identification. " For me to live is Christ." 
It means transformation. "If any man be in 
Christ Jesus, he is a new creature." It means 
co-operation, for the believer goes forward in the 
fellowship of His toil, His suffering, His glory and 
His triumph. When we come to know this union 
with God through Christ, this union with Christ 
as God, grief can no more have dominion over us. 
Once it overcame us as a flood. We were whelmed 
in the full thunder of the wave. Now we hear 
only the lingering echo of a broken and receding 
tide. 

Botticelli's Saint Sebastian shows a splendid 
figure standing in firm relief, pierced by arrows. 
We lift our eyes to the face expecting the con- 
tortion of agony, or the light of victory, or the 
true saint's ecstasy, and lo! the face with its 
strong sensuous features and wealth of curling 
hair is calm, unchanged. It is Botticelli's way of 
saying that the believer in mystical union with 
his Lord is lifted high above pain's ravage, where 
the slings and arrows, the puncturing irons, and 
stinging flames, the strong crying and the tears 
cannot come It was after Paul had said " I 
live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the 
life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith 
of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave him- 
self for me," that he was able to say amid the 
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C hristus C ons o I at or 

uncertainties of a Roman imprisonment: " I 
have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith 
to be content." 

What is your sorrow? That deep sorrow of 
which you cannot speak? That intricate difficulty 
for which there is no earthly comfort? Bring it 
to Jesus. His precepts will enlighten you; His 
unveiling of God's Fatherhood will comfort you. 
And if you will open your heart wide to His 
entrance; if you will utterly surrender your life 
to Him, you shall come to know the supreme 
felicity of His indwelling. And then you shall 
understand what He meant when, sending His 
disciples forth even as sheep in the midst of 
wolves, He said: " These words have I spoken 
unto you, that my joy might be in you, and that 
your joy might be full." 



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